
Book_:^ 



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POPULAR STUDIES IN LITERATURE 










.'^XK 



W-J, 



HOME STUDY CIRCLE 

EDITED BY 

SEYMOUR EATON 



LITERATURE 

I. ROBERT BURNS 

II. SIR WALTER SCOTT 

III. LORD BYRON 



From The Chicago Record 



New York 

The Doubleday &. McClure Co, 

1899 




A 



V2 IX 






4511^^ 



Copyright, 1897, 1898, 1899, by The Chicago Record. 
Copyright, 1899, by Victor F. Lawson. 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 




c. J. peters 8e son, typographers. 







INTRODUCTORY STUDY, 



In the study of all human effort it is the personal 
element that is the most interesting. It is also the 
most fructifying. This is the justification of biography. 
This is the reason why, in the study of literature for 
example, so much of the work is rightfully the study of 
the lives and characters of authors. 

We recognize the truth of the principle instinctively. 
We feel readily enough that we are not so much con- 
cerned in knowing the characteristics of a great man's 
greatness, the limitations of it, the history of it, as we 
are in knowing what sort of man it was who was great. 
We want to know how the qualities to which his great- 
ness was due comported with the other qualities that he 
had. In plain words, we want to see how nearly the 
individual characteristics of a great man are like the 
characteristics of common humanity. 

It is the universal instinct of self- betterment that 
prompts this feeling. We know well that the inspira- 
tion of a great example is possible only when it seems 
possible. That it may seem possible it must proceed 
from a life not wholly unlike our own. The example of 
a great life would be valueless to us if that life were so 
unlike our own as to have nothing in common with it. 
Burns, Scott, and Byron were all great men ; and in 



vm INTRODUCTORY STUDY. 

the lives of every one of the three there is an inspiration 
for any one that seeks it. But the inspiration to be 
derived from the Hfe of Burns is far greater than that 
to be derived from the Hves of the other two. Why } 
Because we instinctively recognize in Burns a great 
human heart, that is to say, a heart throbbing in com- 
plete unison with the great common heart of humanity. 
" He was touched with the feeling of our infirmities," 
— could this be said of any human being if not of Burns t 

Who can read his life without tears — tears of sym- 
pathy and sorrow welling up at almost every turn in tlie 
story } Intrinsically so noble, and yet by the stress of 
his environment, and by mistakes of judgment and of 
conduct, condemned to a life that had so much that was 
ignoble in it. How typical of the life so many have 
to live ! 

It was the fashion, for some fifty years or more, for 
the world strongly to condemn Burns. But that fashion 
has passed away. The world has forgiven him. Not a 
fault or a failing but has been forgiven to him richly. 
And this not by reason of any newly developed loose- 
ness of judgment or newly developed laxity of principle ; 
but because the world has recognized in him a heart 
that, had years been granted him, would have turned 
out all right : — 

" Wha does the utmost that he can. 
Will whyles do mair." 

Scott was born under a brighter star. Inherited ten- 
dencies, parental influences, education, social advantages, 
character, disposition, mental endowment, the circum- 
stances of his environment and his existence generally, 



INTRODUCTORY STUDY. ix 

all led up to the realization of a great success. In 
scarcely any other than one thing, in all his life, did 
Scott fail to make the most of himself and his chances. 
But had not that one mistake been made, had not 
Scott entangled himself in the business of printing and 
publishing, and so in the end brought ruin upon his fine 
fabric of realized hopes and dreams, who will say that 
his life would have had the same interest for posterity, 
or that his fame would have endured so perpetually re- 
splendent in all its pristine wonder of brilliancy and 
power.'' Even without our knowing it, our judgment of 
the poet and the romancist is influenced by our appre- 
ciation of the character of the man in whom the poet 
and the romancist were existent. We cannot even think 
of Scott without thinking of the heroic fortitude of him 
who at fifty-five years of age sat down to write off by 
the earnings of his pen a debt of ^750,000 ! 

For Scott we have nothing but admiration and won- 
der ; but for Byron, as for Burns, there must always be 
pity. The pity, however, proceeds not from so deep 
or so general a spring. Every heart finds in Burns an 
answering throb of tenderness and brotherhood : — 

♦' Should auld acquaintance be forgot 
And never brought to min'? 
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, 
And the days of auld langsyne?" 

'♦For a' that, and a' that, 

Our toils obscure and a' that, 
The rank is but the guinea stamp — 
The man *s the gowd for a' that." 



X INTRODUCTORY STUDY. 

But Byron's freedom-loving spirit is frequently a thing 
of books and culture, and his sentiment the utterance of 
a feeling wholly personal to himself without even the 
suggestion of a general application : — 

"Arouse ye Goths and glut your ire." 

" A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine — 
Dash down your cup of Samian wine." 

" Teach me — too early taught by thee ! 
To bear, forgiving and forgiven : 
On earth thy love was such to me 
It fain would form my hope in heaven." 

Besides, there was a note of unreality in Byron. His 
griefs, his sorrows, his despairs, were melodramatic. His 
loving was hyperbolical and effusive. Even his passion- 
ate utterances for freedom lacked '' the one thing need- 
ful," the air of conviction. It was only in his satire — 
his on-rushing, over-rushing, everywhere-pervading floods 
of invective and denunciation, glowing with fiery wit 
and sarcasm, as waves of the sea are at times lit up by 
sunlight — that Byron appeared in his own true, unap- 
proachable self. Yet when he was in this mood, his 
mind was not always at its sanest. But it was always 
at its mightiest. 

But despite the unreality and the putting forward of 
himself as an object of commiseration, and the bookish- 
ness of his rhapsodies on liberty, freedom, etc., there 
was nevertheless much in Byron that was genuinely true 
and honest; much, too, that, if considered well, still 
merits our sympathy. The stars ran evil in their courses 
the day of his nativity. That he was not a far worse 



INTRODUCTORY STUDY. xi 

man than he was is no fault of those who were respon- 
sible for his birth and being. If we see things in his 
character and conduct that we would condemn, we must 
remember that, had not nature been resisted by genius, 
the probabilities all are that Byron's life would have 
been wholly trivial and self-indulgent. 

The truth remains, then, that to understand Byron 
aright, precisely as to understand Burns aright, it is 
necessary to understand the man's life, the man's inher- 
ited disposition and tendencies, the man's character and 
personality, and the circumstances under which he lived 
his life. Almost every poem that Byron wrote was a 
revelation of personal feeling or experience. Knowing 
this, and knowing, too, how much he had to bear that 
was no burden of his own making, we can but read him 
with our hearts open to his moods, matching our own 
moods to his as best we may. 

With Scott how all this is different ! Scott is almost 
as free from personal moods as Shakespeare. Whether 
he be in prose or verse, at every turn we take we feel 
that we are in the charge of sanity and discretion. We 
may resign our individual judgments if we will, for we 
may be sure we shall never be called upon to give ear to 
thoughts other than the noblest and the purest. 

It is a natural and not altogether profitless question 
to enquire : Of the three, Burns, Scott, and Byron, 
which is the greatest } Scott and Byron have certainly 
filled the greater places in literary history. Scott, the 
founder of the modern historical romance, the unap- 
proachable reproducer of historical place, time, and 



xll IXTRODUCTORY STUDY. 

event, the creator of characters as many and as real as 
those Shakespeare ushered into the world, is without 
doubt one of the very greatest names in literary history. 

Bvron's name is not nearly so great, yet, even so, his 
greatness is considerable. He will remain a star of the 
first magnitude to all time. As a poet he far surpassed 
Scott, not merely in immediate popularity, but also in 
range of theme and variety of composition. He will 
never again be so popular as he once was, but time 
cannot wither the laurels that are rightfully his due for 
some of his descriptive and reflective pieces, and espe- 
cially for his satire. Satire is not a high kind of poetry ; 
but such as it is, in certain qualities of it Byron is 
supreme. 

Poor Burns' achievement was smaller, much smaller, 
than either Scott's or Byron's, even if Scott's prose 
work be dropped out of account. A few poetical epis- 
tles, a few satires, a few occasional pieces, and his songs 

— that was all. His was no lettered ease, or life of 
professional digiiity and comfort. \\\orking on his farm 

— at the plough's tail, or hedging, ditching, scything, 
flailing ; or toiling at his excise work — journeying four 
hundred miles on horseback fortnightly — what little he 
conceived could come to him only in flashes of inspi- 
ration, to be afterwards put down by pen and ink in 
snatches of time stolen from needful rest. But as to 
that little — what shall we sav of it } What can we 
say of it, except that much of it is the human intellect's 
choicest mintage } 

A thousand years from now, amid the stress of all 
the interests that will occupy the world's attention at 
that date, who will be able to read " Childe Harold," or 



INTRODUCTORY STUDY. XUl 

even " Don Juan " ? A thousand years from now, who, 
indeed, will ever find time to read ''The Lady of the 
Lake " or " Ivanhoe " ; or even *' Kenilworth " or '' Old 
Mortality " ? And yet may we not safely say that such 
songs as '' Ae fond kiss and then we sever," or '' O wert 
thou in the cauld blast," or ''Thou Hngering star with 
lessening ray," or " Ye banks and braes and streams 
around," or "Of a' the airts the winds can blaw," will 
be read and sung and treasured in memory's storehouse 
as the richest of her treasures, as long as our present 
civilization endures ? And why say this of these songs 
of Burns rather than of Byron's satires or of Scott's 
great romances? Because Burns' songs deal simply 
and directly, yet beautifully and ennoblingly, with that 
primary passion of the human heart — the love of man 
for woman, the love of woman for man. Until love 
itself shall die, and be cast out, these songs of love will 
endure. And we have no warrant for thinking that love 
in heart of man or woman will ever grow less strong or 
less pure than it is to-day. 

John Ebenezek Bryant. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introductory Study vii 

ROBERT BURNS. 

Biographical Study 3 

Selected Critical Studies and Reminiscences . . 33 

The Home of Robert Burns 59 

Readings from Burns. 

The Cotter's Saturday Night 74 

To a Mountain Daisy 79 

Man was Made to Mourn 81 

The Banks o' Doon , . 86 

Tam o' Shanter 86 

Students' Notes and Queries 96 

Study Outline for Clubs and Circles .... 103 

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Biographical Study 109 

Sir Walter Scott — A Ten-minute Talk .... 128 

Scott's Poetry 132 

Abbotsford : Scott's Home . , 140 

Critical Studies and Reminiscences .... 149 

Some Queries and Answers '. . . . - . . 170 
Readings from Scott. 

Sunset in a Storm 173 

Discovery of the Tomb of Robert the Bruce . . 174 

The Prayer of Louis the Eleventh . . . . 177 

Before the Reading of the Will . . . . 179 

The Fisherman's Funeral 187 

The Trial and Execution of Fergus Mac-Ivor . . 196 

Scott's Reflections on his own Life .... 203 

Additional Readings . 209 

XV 



XVI 



CONTENTS. 



LORD BYRON. 
Biographical Study 
Critical Studies and Reminiscences 
Readings from Byron. 

Maid of Athens, Ere We Part 

On Parting 

Fare Thee Well 

Epistle to Augusta 

Waterloo . 

Venice 

Rome . 

The Dying Gladiator 

The Coliseum — The Pantheon 

Address to the Ocean 

First Love 

Donna Julia's Letter 

Haidee Discovering Juan 

The Isles of Greece 
Students' Notes and Queries 
Study Outline for Clubs and Circles 



215 

243 

263 
264 
264 
266 
270 
272 
274 

275 
276 
277 
279 
280 
282 
284 
288 
293 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, 



PAGE 

Portrait of Burns Frontispiece 

Burns' Cottage, Alloway 4 

Room in which Burns was Born 5 

Tam o' Shanter Inn, Ayr 7 

Interior of the Burns Cottage 7 

Robert Burns 11 

Mrs. Burns (Jean Armour) 17 

Mrs. Dunlop 23 

House in which Burns Died, Dumfries .... 28 

Flaxman's Statue of Burns 35 

Facsimile of a Poem by Burns 41 

Mausoleum of Burns 51 

Burns' Monument, Alloway 61 

The Twa Brigs o' Ayr 61 

Alloway Kirk and Burial Place of the Burns Family . 63 

The Auld Brig o' Doon 64 

Burns' Monument, Ayr 65 

PoosiE Nansie's Inn, Mauchline Station .... 69 

Burns' Monument, Edinburgh 71 

Statue of Burns, Dumfries 83 

**Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon" . . , . 87 

Sir Walter Scott 108 

Walter Scott in 1777 iii 

Lady Scott 115 

Abbotsford, from the Southeast 121 

The Entrance Hall, Abbotsford 121 

Melrose Abbey, from the Southeast 133 

The Silver Strand, Loch Katrine 134 

xvii 



xviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

VKGB. 

The Trosachs 135 

Roslin's Glen 136 

Sir Walter Scott , . . . 137 

Map of the Country about Edinburgh . . . . 140 

Abbotsford: The Garden Front • 142 

The Drawing-room at Abbotsford 143 

Sir Walter Scott's Armory 143 

The Library at Abbotsford 146 

Loch Katrine, Ellen's Isle 156 

The Chantrey Bust of Scott 166 

Dryburgh Abbey, from the Cloister Court . . . 167 

Scott's Tomb at Dryburgh Abbey 167 

Dryburgh Abbey, from the East 176 

Scott's Monument at Edinburgh 180 

Sir Walter Scott 188 

Portrait of Byron 214 

Newstead Abbey, the Ancestral Home of Lord Byron . 216 

Newstead Abbey, from the Front 219 

Lord Byron's Bedroom, Newstead Abbey .... 223 

The Drawing-room, Newstead Abbey 227 

Lady Byron 230 

Lord Byron » . 233 

Arms of the Byron Family 240 

Extract from a Letter of Lord Byron .... 247 

The Villa Diodati 252 

Franciscan Convent, Athens 254 

The Maid of Athens 257 

Lord Byron's Tomb 260 



CONTRIBUTORS TO THE 

Home Study Circle 
POPULAR STUDIES IN LITERATURE 



Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D.D. 

Hamilton W. Mabie. 

Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 

Edward Dowden, Litt.D., D.C.L., LL.D. 

William J. Rolfe, Litt.D. 

Hiram Corson, LL.D. 

Brander Matthews, LL.D. 

John Ebenezer Bryant, M.A. 

Theodore W. Hunt, Ph.D. 
Albert S. Cook, Ph.D., LL.D. 

Isaac N. Demmon, a.m., LL.D. 

Oscar Lovell Triggs, Ph.D. 

Lewis E. Gates, A.M. 

Maurice Francis Egan, LL.D. 

John Franklin Genung, LL.D. 

Julius Emil Olson, B.L. 

Joseph Villiers Denney, A.M. 



ROBERT BURNS. 



ROBERT BURNS. 



"BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY. 



Burns is the world's greatest lyric poet. He is also 
the national poet of Scotland, — the poet revered and 
loved by Scotsmen the wide world over. The genius of 
Burns for song writing was of the very highest order. 
For the writing of poetry of every sort it was of the 
highest order also, only, unfortunately, he gave to the 
world few proofs of his genius other than in songs. 
The story of his life is inexpressibly sad. The great 
powers with which he was endowed were only partially 
employed. Oftentimes, too, they were employed on 
themes unworthy of them. Oppressed with care and 
anxiety, defeated of hope, broken in health, broken also 
in courage and in fortitude to resist evil, he came to an 
untimely end ; and the last years of his life, years in 
the very prime of manhood, that should have been his 
happiest years and fruitful of the noblest accomplish- 
ment, were the saddest years of all, and fruitful of little 
but disappointment and sorrow. 

Robert Burns was born in a cottage (still standing) 
near '' Alio way's haunted kirk," and the '^ Auld Brig o' 
Doon," about two miles from the town of Ayr, on Jan- 

3 



4 LITERA TURE. 

uary 25, 1759. His father, a man of Scotland's noblest 
type, had come from Kincardineshire, and was a gar- 
dener, and at the time of the poet's birth was making a 
livelihood by cultivating a small nursery garden. His 




Burns' Cottage, Alloway. 



mother, whom the poet much resembled both in features 
and in address, and whom he tenderly loved, was a 
woman also of the noblest type, who possessed an 
*' inexhaustible store of ballads and traditionary tales," 
which she made the delightful entertainment of her 
gifted son during all his years of childhood and youth. 
When Burns was seven years old his father gave up 
his nursery garden, and took a farm two miles from the 
''Brig o' Doon," called Mount Oliphant. At Mount 



ROBERT BURNS. 5 

Oliphant the family remained for eleven years, or until 
the poet was in his eighteenth year. The Mount Oli- 
phant farm, however, proved to be a very bottomless 
pit to the industry of its occupants. Not the consci- 
entious and zealous labors of the father, nor the over- 
worked strength of the young poet and his brother, nor 




Room in which Burns was Born. 



the frugal, self-denying endeavors of the mother, were of 
any avail in their long-continued struggle with its barren- 
ness. Burns afterward spoke of his toils at Mount Oli- 
phant as ''the unceasing moil of a galley slave." But, 
worse, his constitution became irretrievably impaired in 
efforts as a lad to do the work of a man. The father, 
too, in his hopeless contest with his untoward lot, wore 
out his strength, and broke his health. In 1777, how- 



6 LITERA TURE. 

ever, the Mount Oliphant lease ran out, and the family 
removed to Lochlea, a farm on the north bank of the 
river Ayr, in the parish of Tarbolton. Here they re- 
mained for seven years, or until the poet was in his 
twenty-fifth year. Although the farm at Lochlea was 
better than the one at Mount Oliphant, the hardships 
and privations of the previous eleven years of distress 
had left an irremediable effect upon the financial condi- 
tion of the family. So that when the father died in 
February, 1784, the two brothers could with difficulty 
save enough from the wreck of his belongings to stock a 
new farm. However, they did the best they could ; and 
in March (1784) the family moved to Mossgiel, a farm in 
the parish of Mauchline, about half a mile from Mauch- 
line village on the river Ayr. Mossgiel was the home of 
Burns from his twenty-fifth year until his twenty-ninth, 
— that is, until he set up a home for himself at Ellisland. 
It was at Mossgiel that Burns spent the happiest days of 
his life, if happy days he may have had. It was there 
that he was first recognized as a poet. It was there that 
his genius blossomed into its full flower. It was there 
that he wrote many of those poems for which he is held 
dearest in the hearts of his countrymen, and for which 
his name will be longest cherished by lovers of the beau- 
tiful and true in every land. It was there that he pre- 
pared his first volume of poems for printing, and it was 
from there that he went to Edinburgh to be received 
with acclaim as Scotland's wondrous "poet ploughman." 
And it was there he soon returned again, convinced that 
the applause of the world can be of little avail in a 
struggle with fate and the consequences of one's own 
misdoing. It was there, too, that he met and wooed his 




The Tam O'Shanter Inn, Ayr. 




Interior of the Burns Cottage. 



ROBERT BURNS. g 

"Jean," of "the belles of Mauchline" "the jewel o' 
them a' " ; and it was from there (in 1788) that he 
brought her to the home he had proudly made for her 
at Ellisland. 

Burns had the inestimable blessing of being born into 
a family where integrity, honor, sobriety, and every other 
wholesome virtue had full sway. And not only were his 
parents virtuous — they were religious. The fear of 
God was a real and awful thing to them, and in the fear 
of God they endeavored to bring up their children. In 
that inimitable picture which the poet has drawn of 
rural Scottish home-life, "The Cotter's Saturday Night," 
every line is an image of the life he had lived in his 
humble home : — 

" The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face, 
They round the ingle * form a circle wide ; 
The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace, 
The big ha' bible, ance ^ his father's pride : 
His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, 
His lyart haffets ^ wearing thin and bare : 

Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide 
He wales * a portion with judicious care ; 
And ' Let us worship God! ' he says, with solemn air." 

And despite toil and poverty, and grievous disappoint- 
ment of their hopes, father, mother, brothers, and sisters 
lived the God-fearing lives which these lines betoken, to 
the end. With Robert Burns it was different. The 
soul of honor in all matters relating to business, warm- 
hearted and true-hearted as a friend, dutiful and tender 
as a son and a brother, tender and dutiful, too, in all the 
obligations of husband and father, in two relations only 

i Fireside. 2 Once. ^ Gray side-locks. ^ Chooses. 



lO LITERATURE. 

in life did he fail of that high standard which none knew 
better than he how to set forth and to make plain. In 
the pure affection of lover and maiden Burns often 
found a theme for his finest verse : — 

•' O happy love! — where love like this is found ! — 
O heart-felt raptures ! bliss beyond compare ! 
I 've pac^d much this weary mortal round, 
And sage experience bids me this declare — 
' If heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare, 
One cordial in this melancholy vale, 

'T is when a youthful, loving, modest pair 
In other''s arms breathe out the tender tale, 
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the ev'ning gale.' " 

And in the serenity of mind and independence of 
feeling that come from an unclouded conscience — not 
in worldly success, or honors, or in the comfort and 
ease that wealth can bring — Burns rightly placed his 
ideal of human happiness : — 

" It 's no' in titles or in rank, 

It 's no' in wealth like Lon'on bank. 

To purchase peace and rest ; 
It's no' in makin' muckle mair,^ 
It's no' in books, it 's no' in lear,^ 

To make us truly blest ; 
If happiness hae not her seat 

And centre in the breast. 
We may be wise, or rich, or great. 

But never can be blest : 
Nae treasures, nor pleasures, 

Could make us happy lang ; 
The heart aye's the part aye 

That makes us right or wrang." 

1 Much more. 2 Learning. 




/ I 

RoRERT Burns. 



ROBERT BURNS. 



^3 



But, alas, his own affections, tender and supremely 
loving though they were, often proved to be not only his 
own but others' undoing. The pathetic regret of " that 
exquisitely affecting stanza," which, as Sir Walter Scott 
has said, '' contains the essence of a thousand love- 
tales," had unfortunately only too frequent occasion to 
be uttered by him : — 

*' Had we never lov'd sae kindly, 
Had we never lov'd sae blindly, 
Never met — or never parted, 
We had ne'er been broken-hearted." 

And his clear insight led him to depict his own weak- 
nesses of either sort in a '' confession " (a supposed epi- 
taph upon himself), which Wordsworth with pathetic 
sympathy has declared to be '' at once devout, poetical, 
and human," although unfortunately " a history in the 
shape of a prophecy," ''a foreboding that was to be real- 
ized," *'a record that has proved to be authentic " : — 

** Is there a man whose judgment clear 
Can others teach the course to steer, 
Yet runs, himself, life's mad career, 

Wild as the wave ; 
Here pause — and, thro' the starting tear, 

Survey this grave. 

•' The poor inhabitant below 
Was quick to learn and wise to know, 
And keenly felt the friendly glow 

And softer flame ; 
But thoughtless follies laid him low 
And stain'd his name." 

Among the blessings which Burns owed to the char- 
acter of his father was his education. This education in 



H 



LIT ERA TV RE. 



quantity was not much, but in quality it was inestimable. 
The grinding poverty which Mount Oliphant's barren- 
ness imposed upon the fortunes of the elder Burns, pre- 
cluded his securing for his children even the advantage 
of the instruction which a Scottish public school at that 
time afforded, cheaply obtained though this could be. 
But the zealous desire of this notable father to have his 
children educated was not to be frustrated by poverty or 
any other ill fortune. A teacher was secured, as poor 
perhaps as his pupils, who lived with the family, and 
instructed the young poet and his brothers and sisters, 
while the father also, it is said, supplemented the instruc- 
tion of the teacher with his own help. It is doubtful if 
in any other home, even in Scotland, such an example of 
devotion to learning could have been presented. This 
teacher proved to be to the poet a veritable fount of 
inspiration ; and under his friendly guidance, even after 
he ceased to be his pupil. Burns pursued a course of 
reading very different from that which most lads in his 
circumstances would have thought of following. His 
brother Gilbert says of him, that " no book was so volu- 
minous as to slacken his energies." Even before he had 
left Mount Oliphant he was familiar with Shakespeare, 
Pope, and Addison. But his reading covered a far wider 
range than even these great authors, and included works 
in theology, philosophy, and history. When afterward 
he went to Edinburgh, though still a young man, the 
professors and litterateurs of that academic city were 
''astonished at his doctrine" ; for his range of informa- 
tion, his insight into questions of political economy and 
metaphysics, the vigor and purity of his language, and 
the vigor and precision of his thought seemed to them 



ROBERT BURNS. 



15 



extraordinary. Burns continued to be a reader and a 
student even to the end ; and though never in all his life 
was he other than very poor, and though only for a few 
short months had he money which he could freely spend, 
yet when he died it was found that his library was such 
as only a man of taste and of culture, and with a thirst 
for knowledge, would have been likely to get together ; 
for it comprised the cream of what was then available 
in poetry, in the drama, in elegant literature, in works of 
fiction, in history, in general science, and in theology. 
It is doubtful if even in the politest circles of Edin- 
burgh, Glasgow, or Aberdeen, there were any libraries 
richer in what was really best in the world's literature 
than that of the so-called ploughman Burns, 

Burns' earliest, most constant, and most lasting liter- 
ary passion was song-craft. He was only, as he himself 
has told us, in his '^ fifteenth autumn," when he com- 
posed his first poem ; and this, like his very last poem, 
and like almost all of his best poems, was a song — a 
love-song. Burns himself thought it '' a silly perform- 
ance," but, nevertheless, it had in it that direct simplic- 
ity of expression which is the great charm of all his 
best work : — 

" As bonnie lasses I hae seen 
And mony full as braw ; ^ 
But for a modest, gracefu' mien, 
The like I never saw. 



" She dresses aye ^ sae clean and neat, 
Baith decent and genteel ; 
And then there 's something in her gait 
Gars ^ ony dress look weel.'' * 

1 Well dressed. 2 Always, 3 Makes. 4 Well. 



1 6 LITERATURE. 

Even at the early age at which this poem was written, 
Burns' principal interest lay in the study of the songs 
and song-legends of his native land ; and his fondest 
wish was to be able to add something to the lustre of his 
country's poetic fame : — 

♦* E'en then a wish — I mind its power — 
A wish that to my latest hour 

Shall strongly heave my breast, 
That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake, 
Some useful plan or book could make, 
Or sing a sang at least/' 

And this, through good repute and evil repute, through 
good fortune and ill fortune, was his chief desire all his 
life long. To achieve this desire he brought to bear both 
genius and industry. He was rarely idle, except in cir- 
cumstances when others would have been idle also, 

" Leeze me on rhyme ; ^ it 's aye a treasure, 
My chief, amaist my only pleasure, 
At hame, a-fieP, at wark or leisure, 

The Muse, poor hizzie ! ^ 
Tho' rough and raploch ^ be her measure. 

She 's seldom lazy." 

And when in later years he found that his songs were 
welcomed by his countrymen as worthy to be ranked 
with any of the nation's best, he would not, although he 
needed money sadly, accept a penny of pay for any that 
he could contribute to the nation's stock ; and gave utter- 
ance at once to his independence and his patriotism in 
words like these : — 

1 Hurrah for poetry. 2 Girl. 3 Coarse. 



N 



ROBERT BURNS. 



17 



"I shall enter into your undertaking with all the small portion 
of abilities that I have, strained to their utmost exertion by the 
impulse of enthusiasm. ... As to remuneration you may think 
my songs either above or below price ; for they shall be absolutely 
one or the other. In the honest enthusiasm with which I embark 
in your undertaking, to talk of money, wages, fee, hire, etc., would 
be downright prostitution of soul.^' 

Burns' poverty-burdened and irregular life, brightened 
though it had been by genius, wit, humor, and local 
fame, had ended, in 
1786, when he was 
entering upon his 
twenty-eighth year, 
in utter discontent 
with himself, the 
gloomiest sort of de- 
spondency, and a de- 
termination to leave 
his native land and 
find a new home and, 
if possible, begin a 
new and better life on 
a plantation in the 
West Indies. The 
father of his chosen 
Jean would not allow 

him formally to marry her, and had himself destroyed 
the document which had certified to their secret 
contract. He was every moment in danger of being 
imprisoned because he could not furnish security for the 
upbringing of his infant children. His mind was dis- 
tracted by other ties, — of one of which the memory, 
three years later, was the inspiration of the most beau- 




Mrs. Burns (Jean Armour;. 



1 8 LITERATURE. 

tiful of all his love lyrics, that immortal '' burst of 
passion," as Professor Wilson calls it, beginning : — 

" Thou lingering star with lessening ray 

That lov'st to greet the early morn, 
Again thou usher'st in the day 

My Mary from my soul was torn ; 
Oh, Mary! dear, departed shade ! 

Where is thy place of blissful rest ? 
Seest thou thy lover lowly laid ? 

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast ? " 

And he was fast becoming a prey to despair : — 

" Oppressed with grief, oppressed with care, 
A burden more than I can bear, 

I set me down and sigh : 
Oh, life ! thou art a galling load, 
Along a rough, a weary road, 

To wretches such as I ! 
Dim backward as I cast my view. 
What sickening scenes appear ! 
What sorrows yet may pierce me thro\ 
Too justly I may fear ! 
Still caring, despairing. 

Must be my bitter doom : 
My woes here shall close ne'er 
But with the closing tomb ! '' 



So utterly helpless was Burns' position at this time 
(1786, when he was in his twenty-eighth year) that he 
had not money enough even to purchase a steerage pas- 
sage to Jamaica, whither in his distress he had determined 
to flee. Some friends, however, suggested the publish- 
ing his poems, and took upon themselves the task of 
getting subscriptions for them. In July the little vol- 



ROBERT BURNS. 



19 



ume, " Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, by Robert 
Burns," accordingly appeared. Though published in a 
country town (Kilmarnock, Ayrshire), unheralded by 
advertisements, and unnoticed by critics and reviewers, 
its fame soon spread throughout all the Scottish low- 
lands. Equally by learned and unlearned, by gentry 
and by people, was its author applauded as the bard of 
Scotland. With money obtained from the sale of the 
book the passage for Jamaica was secured and paid for, 
but the voyage was never undertaken. A change had 
come in the fortunes of the "Ayrshire Ploughman " (the 
name by which he was fondly called), both sudden and 
momentous. The literati of the nation sought him out. 
Great people of every degree evinced their interest in 
him, and honored him with their correspondence. Hope 
sprang up once more in his breast. With encourage- 
ment pouring in upon him from every quarter, he went 
to Edinburgh (November, 1786), in the thought that 
perchance some substantial good fortune would accrue 
to him there. So far as friendly attentions and kind 
words were of value, he was not disappointed. He was 
welcomed with the applause of the entire capital. He 
was feted and he was feasted, and for a whole winter he 
was the lion of the town. His head, however, was never 
turned. He remained the same sincere, self-respecting 
poet ploughman he had ever been. He knew, perhaps 
only too well, the real significance of his sudden acces- 
sion to fame ; and he had good sense enough not to take 
it too seriously, — nay, even to treat it humorously : — 



" This wot ye all whom it concerns, 
I, Rhymer Robin, alias Burns, 
October twenty-third. 



20 LIT ERA TURE. 

A ne'er-to-be forgotten day, 
So far I sprachled ^ up the brae," 
I dinner'd wP a lord ! 

" [Yes] wi' a lord ! — stand out my shin ! 
A lord — a peer — an earPs son ! 

Up higher yet my bonnet ! 
And sic a lord ! — lang Scotch ells twa,^ 
Our peerage he overlooks them a\ 

As I look o'er my sonnet." 

By April of the next year (1787), however, he had 
effected the principal object which he had in view when 
he first set out for Edinburgh, — he had secured the 
publication of the second edition of his poems. This 
"second edition" was received with the utmost eclat. 
The best names in Scotland eagerly came forward to 
assist in the subscription for it ; and Burns soon found 
himself not only famous, but in the command of consid- 
erable money. The ultimate profit of the poet because 
of its publication was not less than ^500. 

These two volumes of verse, the first, or Kilmarnock, 
edition of his poems, and the second, or '' Edinburgh," 
edition, were all the literary work from which Burns 
received any pecuniary benefit. And, with the excep- 
tion of '' Tam o' Shanter " and " The Wounded Hare," 
these two editions contained almost all the work other 
than his songs that he was destined to write. In fact, 
the earlier book, the Kilmarnock edition, contained the 
greater part of those poems for which, other than his 
songs, he is held in highest esteem by his countrymen, 
— his familiar " Epistles," ''The Holy Fair," ''Scotch 
Drink," "Hallowe'en," "The Twa Dogs," "Poor 
Mailie's Elegy," "The Address to the De'il," "To a 

1 Clambered. 2 Slope. 3 Over six feet tall. 



ROBERT BURNS. 21 

Mountain Daisy," ''To a Mouse," and that most revered 
of all his writings, ''The Cotter's Saturday Night." 
Some poems of his youth, however, equally famous with 
any of the foregoing, were not included in the volume, 
and were, indeed, not published in book form during the 
poet's lifetime ; as, for example, " The Twa Herds," 
" Holy Willie's Prayer," and " The Jolly Beggars," the 
last of which is pronounced by both Carlyle and Sir 
Walter Scott the finest of all his poems. Most of these 
earlier poems of Burns were written in the garret of the 
house at Mossgiel, when he was in his twenty-fifth, his 
twenty-sixth, and his twenty-seventh years ; but others 
were written previously at Lochlea, and some even dur- 
ing his youthful and distressful years at Mount Oliphant. 
Almost every poem that Burns wrote was suggested by 
some bit of personal history, or some local event in which 
he took an interest, so that it is impossible to separate 
his poetry from his biography. Indeed, Burns' poems 
are his best and truest revelation. In the second, or 
Edinburgh, edition of his poetry some notable additions 
were made, as, for example, " Death and Dr. Hornbook," 
" The Brigs of Ayr," " The Ordination," " The Address 
to the Unco Quid," and the " Address to a Haggis " ; 
but the new volume marked no development in the poetic 
career of the author ; and when Burns retired from 
Edinburgh to his farm at ElHsland (1788) his days as 
poet, other than as song-writer, were practically over. 

Burns unfortunately was a long time in getting a set- 
tlement with his Edinburgh publishers, and in order to 
get a settlement at all lived a second winter (1787- 
1788) in the capital, which proved to be no blessing to 
him. In the summer and autumn of 1787, however, he 



22 LITERATURE. 

had taKcn two notable tours, one in that romantic border 
country afterward so celebrated by Scott and Words- 
worth, and a second in the highlands. But neither of 
these tours had resulted in poetic inspiration. In each, 
unfortunately, the poet was accompanied by those who 
hindered rather than helped his social and literary devel- 
opment. In fact, all through life, despite his many boon 
companions, and despite the kindness which many noble 
men and women displayed toward him, Burns seems to 
have missed true friendship. It is pitiful to reflect how 
much he might have accomplished, how much the world 
would have gained, had he found, when once fortune's 
sun beamed kindly upon him, some true friend, who 
could have held him to his proper course until he had 
safely passed the critical years of transition from lowli- 
ness to distinction, from obscurity to fame. But alas, 
that friend was never found, and perhaps never sought 
for. Burns pursued his way alone, even distrusting the 
good intentions of those who would and might have 
helped him, for he was jealous of his independence. He 
had some expectation of receiving a public appointment, 
but the expectation proved to be illusive. He then de- 
termined to become a farmer. 

Burns' fancy fixed upon '' Ellisland " as his new home. 
This was a small place of a hundred acres on the river 
Nith, six miles north of Dumfries. It was "a poet's 
choice," however, "not a farmer's," as a sagacious ac- 
quaintance presently informed him, and as, unfortunately, 
he soon found out for himself. But with what remained 
of his ;£500, after he had paid the expenses of his two 
winters in Edinburgh and of his two tours, and after, 
also, he had lent his brother ^i8o and made handsome 




Mrs. Dunlop. 



ROBERT BURNS. 



25 



presents to his mother and sisters, he stocked his farm, 
and furnished his house ; and, having formally completed 
his marriage contract, he brought his wife to Ellisland 
as their future home (November, 1788). For a very 
short time Burns was very happy at Ellisland. Some of 
his finest love lyrics owe their inspiration to the feeling 
of supreme contentment which his newly established 
domestic life engendered within his breast. His wife 
proved to be a capable, loving woman, who bore her part 
both there and ever afterward with wonderful tact, pa- 
tience, dignity, and kindness. As a master he was 
beloved ; as a neighbor he was liked and respected. The 
gentry and the farmers of the whole countryside became 
his friends. But his farm was a poor one, and he spent 
his little capital in making up the deficiencies of his in- 
come. He worked hard, and strove earnestly to plan 
well and do well ; but with all his efforts he could not 
make up for his error in locating upon land whose natural 
beauty and not its fertility had been its chief recommen- 
dation to him. Bad harvests also occurred to add to 
his misfortunes. It became exceedingly difficult for him 
to pay his way. To eke out his income he applied to be 
appointed excise officer for his district. The position 
was granted him ; but its duties were galling to his 
pride and distressing to all his finer feelings, and his 
whole soul rebelled against them. 

" Searching auld wives' barrels — 
Och hone ! the day ! 
That clarty barm ^ should stain my laurels ; 

But — what 'II ye say ? 
These movin' things, ca'd wives and weans, 
Wad move the very hearts o' stanes ! " 
1 Filthy yeast. 



26 LITERATURE. 

But he did his public work efficiently in every particu- 
lar. He saw clearly enough, however, that the degrada- 
tion of his new life would interfere with his career as 
poet ; but he resolved manfully to endure it for the sake 
of the dear ones dependent upon him. In a letter to a 
brother poet he thus humorously expresses his re- 
solve : — 

" But what d' ye think, my trusty fier,' 
I ^m turn'd a gauger. Peace be here ! 
Parnassian queans,- I fear, I fear 

Ye '11 now disdain me, 
And then my fifty pound a year 

Will little gain me. 

"Ye glaikit,^ gleesome, dainty daimies,* 
Wha by Castalia's wimplin' streamies, 
Lowp,^ sing, and lave your pretty limbics. 

Ye ken, ye ken. 
That Strang necessity supreme is 

'Mang sons o' men 

" I hae a wife and twa wee laddies. 
They maun " hae brose ^ and brats o' duddies " ; 
Ye ken yoursels my heart right proud is, 

I need na vaunt. 
But I '11 sned besoms ^ — thraw saugh woodies,^" 

Before they want." 

But the income Burns derived from his excise work 
was only ^50 a year, and his financial distresses in- 
creased rather than diminished. His position became 
almost unbearable. '' My poor, distracted mind is so 
torn, jaded, and racked, to make one guinea do the 
business of three, that I detest and abhor the very 
word business." His excise work not only took him 

1 Friend. 2 xhe Muses. 3 Giddy. 4 Dames. 5 Leap. g Must. 

"Porridge. s Rags of clothing. ^ Cut brooms. 10 Twist willow ropes. 



ROBERT BURNS. 



27 



away from his farm ("he had ten parishes to survey, 
covering a tract of fifty miles each way, and requiring 
him [frequently] to ride 200 miles a week") ; it also so 
occupied his thoughts that poetic composition became 
impossible to him. But worse than all, it separated him 
from the affectionate domesticity of h;s home, and forced 
him to live much at inns and public houses, where 
every influence worked toward his moral and mental 
deterioration. To a man of inflexible character and un- 
sociable disposition such a life might have proved harm- 
less. But to Burns, whose infinite faculty of sympathy 
made him welcome to every heart, — high or low, rich 
or poor, young or old, man or woman, — the life was 
ruinous. At the end of 1791 the farm at Ellisland was 
given up. He had lost all his capital. He had lost 
faith in himself as a business man. And he had lost 
faith, too, in himself as a man of prudent conduct ; 
lost that "cautious self-control" which he had described 
as "wisdom's root " ; lost, too, once more, his purity of 
heart, and experienced again, as he had in earlier days, 
the bitter truth of his own words : — 

" Of all the numerous ills that hurt our peace — 
That press the soul, or wring the mind with anguish, 
Beyond comparison the worst are those 
By our own folly or our guilt brought on." 

Burns' last years were spent at Dumfries. His sole 
means of livelihood was his income as exciseman, now 
about £60 a year. He lived poorly, but with all his 
faults he preserved his independence. He became no 
man's debtor. At his death it is said he owed not a 
penny. He had hoped to get a " collectorship," which 
would have given him ^200 a year, and have made him 



28 



LITER A TV RE. 



easy in mind and heart for life ; and had he hved a year 
or two longer no doubt his hope would have been real- 
ized. But to other imprudences he now added that of 
taking an unnecessarily offensive part in party politics. 
The collectorship did not come to him. ' His life became 
more and more irregular ; his friendships less and less 
respectable and honoring. But, towards the end, the 
clouds that had darkened his lowering sun were partly 




House in which Burns Died, Dumfries. 



broken and showed a silvery lining. Friends that had 
been alienated rallied round him again, and his conduct 
became steadier and more self-controlled. He was al- 
ways punctilious in the discharge of his public duties ; 
but now his personal duties were equally faithfully at- 
tended to. He carefully supervised his children's in- 
struction, and spent his evenings assisting them in their 
lessons. He grew kinder and ever kinder to his wife, 



EGBERT BURNS. 



29 



and made his memory dear and venerable to her as long 
as life was spared her. He discharged his few debts, 
even to the '' uttermost farthing." He began to realize 
in his own home that high ideal of domestic enjoyment 
which he himself some years before had drawn : — 

" To make a happy fireside clime 
To weans and wife, 
That 's the true pathos and sublime 
Of human life." 

But, unfortunately, early frivolities and later follies of 
a graver kind had undermined his constitution ; and 
when illnesses overtook him he had no strength to with- 
stand them. In an interval of convalescence (July, 
1796) he left Dumfries for a short visit to the seashore, 
in the hope of further recuperation. But instead of 
growing better, he rapidly grew worse. He returned 
home again, '' the stamp of death on every feature." 
His mind, his poetic soul, were, however, as clear and 
as open to inspiration as ever. Some of his most beau- 
tiful lyrics were written in his last illness ; as, for ex- 
ample, that one beginning, — 

" Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast 
On yonder lea, on yonder lea. 
My plaidie to the angry airt,^ 
I 'd shelter thee, I 'd shelter thee " — 

which was written as a compliment to the young girl, 
the daughter of a friend, who was lovingly attending 
him. But on July 21, 1796, he sank into his last sleep. 
His little children were beside him as he passed away ; 

1 Stormy direction. 



30 



LITER A TURE. 



but his ''Jean," ''the lassie" he '' lo'ed best," who 
gladly would have died instead of him, alas, through ill- 
ness could not be with him even to say farewell. 

The glory of Burns' poetry is in his songs. Almost 
all else that he has written, however excellent it may be, 
is but local or national. But his song-craft dealt with 
the passions of the universal human heart, and is there- 
fore as universal as humanity itself. Love, distress, 
hope, fear, joy, grief, tenderness, regret, as phases of 
affection, never by any other poet were embodied in 
words of such tuneful melody, or were the subject of 
such varied and effective exposition. Burns' art, if art 
he had, as a lyric writer, was of that perfection of execu- 
tion which concealed all art. His gift of lyric expression 
was nothing short of divine. His songs literally and 
absolutely sang themselves into being. Of course not 
all he wrote was of that superb quality of excellence 
which his best songs showed. He wrote much that was 
far below his own standard of perfection. But there is 
scarcely even a single song that he wrote in which his 
prayer was not abundantly answered : — 

" Gie me ae spark of Nature's fire, 
That 's a' the learning I desire ; 
Then tho' I drudge thro' dub ^ an' mire 

At pleugh or cart, 
My muse, tho' hamely in attire, 
May touch the heart." 

There is the secret of his power. His muse does 
*Uouch the heart " ; touch it on every side ; touch it to 
its depths. And it was because Burns knew that this 

1 Puddle. 



ROBERT BURNS. 3 1 

song-craft of his was a divine gift that he would not sell 
it. Alas, he often used his gift unworthily ; but when 
once he realized his mission, sell it he never did. The 
volumes of his poems published in his lifetime contained 
but few of his songs. The greater number of them 
were published (partly during his lifetime, but in greater 
part after his death) in two works, — '' The Scots Musical 
Museum," edited by James Johnson, and ''The Melo- 
dies of Scotland," edited by George Thomson. John- 
son and Thomson were two enthusiasts who were 
emulous of getting together complete anthologies of 
Scottish song ; and Burns would not take a penny of 
pay from either of them, although he contributed to 
Johnson's collection over one hundred and eighty songs 
and to Thomson's over sixty. Not only did he supply 
original songs to these collections, but he also amended 
or rewrote many others, furnished notes and other illus- 
trations for them, and otherwise put the whole vast 
store of his traditionary lore, and all his poetical and 
critical ability, at the disposal of their editors. All this 
he did ''for poor auld Scotland's sake." He wished 
"nae higher praise." And well has Scotland honored 
his abiding faith in her forgiveness of his frailties and 
her recognition of his genius. Burns is enthroned in 
the hearts of Scotsmen everywhere. He is loved by 
the whole Scottish people as no other poet was ever 
loved by any people ; for the love of Scotland for her 
poet is a passion, — a love that forgives all and forgets 
all. And this great love has had its great reward. It 
has softened the national character, and made clear to 
the national conscience the deep meaning of that heart- 
piercing reproof ; "He that is without sin among you 



32 



LIT ERA TURE. 



let him cast the first stone." It has raised to a national 
rule of conduct the divine precept given utterance to by 
the poet they honor : — 

" Then gently scan your brother man, 

Still gentlier, sister woman ; 
Though they may gang a-kennin' ^ wrang, 

To step aside is human : 
One point must still be greatly dark, 

The moving ' Why' they do it : 
And just as lamely can ye mark 

How far perhaps they rue it. 

" Who made the heart, 't is He alone 

Decidedly can try us ; 
He knows each chord — its various tone, 

Each spring — its various bias : 
Then at the balance let's be mute. 

We never can adjust it ; 
What 's done v.e partly may compute. 

But know not what 's resisted." 

1 Little. 



SELECTED CRITICAL STUDIES 
AND REMINISCENCES. 



LORD ROSEBERY S CHARACTERIZATION OF BURNS. 

The secret of Burns' extraordinary hold on mankind 
lies in two words, — inspiration and sympathy. Try and 
reconstruct Burns as he was. A peasant, born in a 
cottage that no sanitary inspector in these days wo aid 
tolerate for a moment ; struggling with desperate effort 
against pauperism, almost in vain ; snatching at scraps 
of learning in the intervals of toil, as it were with his 
teeth ; a heavy, silent lad, proud of his ploughing. All 
of a sudden, without preface or warning, he breaks out 
into exquisite song like a nightingale from the brush- 
wood, and continues singing as sweetly — with nightin- 
gale pauses — till he dies. A nightingale sings because 
he cannot help it ; he can only sing exquisitely, because 
he knows no other. So it was with Burns. What is 
this but inspiration ^ One can no more measure or 
reason about it than measure or reason about Niagara. 
If his talents were universal, his sympathy was not less 
so. His tenderness was not a mere selfish tenderness 
for his own family, for he loved all mankind except the 
cruel and the base. Nay, we may go further, and say 
that he placed all creation, especially the suffering and 
despised part of it, under his protection. The oppressor 
in every shape, even in the comparatively innocent em- 

33 



34 



LITER A TURK. 



bodiment of the factor and the sportsman, he regarded 
with direct and personal hostiUty. 

We have something to be grateful for even in the 
weaknesses of men like Burns. Mankind is helped in 
its progress almost as much by the study of imperfection 
as by the contemplation of perfection. Had we nothing 
before us in our futile and halting lives but saints and 
the ideal, we might fail altogether. We grope blindly 
along the catacombs of the world, we climb the dark 
ladder of life, we feel our way to futurity, but we can 
scarcely see an inch around or before us. We stumble 
and falter and fall, our hands and knees are bruised and 
sore, and we look up for light and guidance. Could we 
see nothing but distant, unapproachable impeccability, 
we might well sink prostrate in the hopelessness of emu- 
lation and the weariness of despair. Is it not, then, 
when all seems blank and lightless and lifeless, when 
strength and courage flag, and when perfection seems 
as remote as a star, is it not then that imperfection helps 
us .? When we see that the greatest and choicest images 
of God have had their weaknesses like ours, their temp- 
tations, their hour of darkness, their bloody sweat, are 
we not encouraged by their lapses and catastrophes to 
find energy for one more effort, one more struggle? 
Where they failed we feel it a less dishonor to fail ; their 
errors and sorrow make, as it were, an easier ascent 
from infinite imperfection to infinite perfection. Man, 
after all, is not ripened by virtue alone. Were it so, this 
world were a paradise of angels. No ! Like the growth 
of the earth, he is the fruit of all the seasons — the acci- 
dent of a thousand accidents, a living mystery moving 
through the seen to the unseen. He is sown in dis- 




Flaxman's Statue of Burns. 



SELECTED CRITICAL STUDIES. 



Zl 



honor ; he is matured under all varieties of heat and cold ; 
in mist and wrath, in snow and vapors, in the melancholy 
of autumn, in the torpor of winter, as well as in the 
rapture and fragrance of summer, or the balmy affluence 
of the spring, — its breath, its sunshine, its dew. And 
at the end he is reaped, — the product, not of one climate, 
but of all ; not of good alone, but of evil ; not of joy 
alone, but of sorrow, — perhaps mellowed and ripened, 
perhaps stricken and withered and sour. How, then, 
shall we judge any one ? How, at any rate, shall we 
judge a giant, — great in gifts and great in temptation ; 
great in strength and great in weakness ? Let us glory 
in his strength and be comforted in his weakness. And 
when we thank Heaven for the inestnnable gift of Burns, 
we do not need to remember wherein he was imperfect, 
nor can we bring ourselves to regret that he was made 
of the same clay as ourselves.^ 



BURNS HAS MADE A BROTHERHOOD OF SCOTSMEN. 

It is in his songs, however, more than in his poems, 
that we find Burns most regularly at his best. And 
excellence in song-writing is a rare gift. The snatches 
scattered here and there throughout the plays of Shake- 
speare are perhaps the only collection of lyrics that can 
at all stand comparison with the wealth of minstrelsy 
Burns has left behind him. This was his undying leg- 
acy to the world. Song-writing was a labor of love, 
almost his only comxfort and consolation in the dark days 

1 From an address delivered at Glasgow on the centenary of the poet's 
death, July 21, 1896. 



38 



LITER A TURE. 



of his later years. He set himself to this as to a con- 
genial task, and he knew that he was writing himself 
into the hearts of unborn generations. His songs live ; 
they are immortal, because every one is a bit of his soul. 
These are no feverish, hysterical jingles of clinking 
verse, dead save for the animating breath of music. 
They sing themselves, because the spirit of song is in 
them. Quite as marvellous as his excellence in this 
department of poetry is his variety of subject. He has 
a song for every age, a musical interpretation of every 
mood. But this is a subject for a book to itself. His 
songs are sung all over the world. The love he sings 
appeals to all, for it is elemental and is the love of all. 
Heart speaks to heart in the songs of Robert Burns ; 
there is a freemasonry in them that binds Scotsmen to 
Scotsmen across the seas in the firmest bonds of brother- 
hood. 

What place Burns occupies as a poet has been deter- 
mined not so much by the voice of criticism as by the 
enthusiastic way in which his fellow-mortals have taken 
him to their hearts. The summing-up of a judge counts 
for little when the jury has already made up its mind. 
What matters it whether a critic argues Burns into a 
first or second or third rate poet 1 His countrymen, 
and more than his countrymen, his brothers all the 
world over, who read in his writings the joys and sor- 
rows, the temptations and trials, the sins and shortcom- 
ings, of a great-hearted man, have accepted him as a 
prophet, and set him in the front ranks of immortals. 
They admire many poets ; they love Robert Burns. 
They have been told their love is unreasoning and un- 
reasonable. It may be so. Love goes by instinct more 



SELECTED CRITICAL STUDIES. 39 

than by reason ; and who shall say it is wrong ? Yet 
Burns is not loved because of his faults and failings, but 
in spite of them. His sins are not hidden. He himself 
confessed them again and again, and repented in sack- 
cloth and ashes. If he did not always abjure his weak- 
nesses, he denounced them, and with no uncertain voice ; 
nor do we know how hardly he strove to do more. 

What estimate is to be taken of Burns as a man.? 
will have many and various answers. Those who still 
denounce him as the chief of sinners, and without mercy 
condemn him out of his own mouth, are those whom 
Burns has pilloried to all posterity. There are dull, 
phlegmatic beings, with blood no warmer than ditch- 
water, who are virtuous and sober citizens because they 
have never felt the force of temptation. What power 
could tempt them 1 The tree may be parched and 
withered in the heat of noonday, but the parasitical 
fungus draining its sap remains cool — and poisonous. 
So in the glow of sociability the Pharisee remains cold 
and clammy ; the fever of love leaves his blood at zero. 
Plow can such anomalies understand a man of Burns' 
wild and passionate nature, or, indeed, human nature at 
all } The broad fact remains, however much we may 
deplore his sins and shortcomings, they are the sins and 
shortcomings of a large-hearted, healthy human being. 
Had he loved less his fellow men and women, he might 
have been accounted a better man. After all, too, it 
must be remembered that his failings have been consis- 
tently exaggerated. Coleridge, in his habits of drawing 
nice distinctions, admits that Burns was not a man of 
degraded genius, but a degraded man of genius. Burns 
was neither one nor the other. In spite of the occa- 



40 



LITER A TURE. 



sional excesses of his later years, he did not degenerate 
into drunkenness, nor was the sense of his responsibih- 
ties as a husband, a father, and a man, less clear and 
acute in the last months of his life than it had ever been. 
Had he lived a few years longer we should have seen the 
man, mellowed by sorrow and suffering, braving life, not 
as he had done all along, with the passionate vehemence 
of undisciplined youth, but with the fortitude and dignity 
of one who had learned that contentment and peace are 
the gifts which the world cannot give, and, if he haply 
finds them in his own heart, which it cannot take away. 
That is the lesson we read in the closing months of 
Burns' checkered career. 

But it was not to be. His work was done. The 
message God had sent him into the world to deliver he 
had delivered, imperfectly and with faltering lips it may 
be, but a divine message all the same. And because it 
is divine men still hear it gladly and believe. 

Let all his failings and defects be acknowledged, his 
sins as a man and his limitations as a poet, the want of 
continuity and purpose in his life ; but at the same time 
let his nobler qualities be weighed against these and the 
scale '^ where the pure gold is easily turned in the bal- 
ance." — Gabriel Setoun. 



BORN TO BE SCOTLAND S POET. 

In the poems of Burns there are two groups to be 
distinguished, which faithfully answer to two stages in 
his literary training. In the first of these he is Scottish 
and natural, founding his work on that of earlier Scot- 





A^rAmaA^' imJ^^^ ucM^m^ 

Facsimile of a Poem by Burns. 



42 



LITER A TURE. 



tish poets, and surpassing in his general level the highest 
reaches of their verse. In the second he realized how 
much of his work was at variance with the prevailing 
tone of the eighteenth-century English poetry, and tries 
to fit himself into what he conceives to be the true liter> 
ary groove. But the vein is not his own, and he caa 
not work it with success ; seldom does he bring pure ore 
out of it, except where older threads break out amid the 
new, in some isolated but brilliant instances. 

Burns was born to be the poet of Scotland, not to 
add new forms or new ideas to the school of Pope or 
Thomson. It was for this that his whole early life 
fitted him ; his hardships lent their aid to that end. If 
they did not leave him with a '' lean and hungry look," 
he had yet the other qualities of Cassius ; he read much, 
he was a great observer, and his large and glowing eye 
looked right through the minds of men. Like Cassius, 
too, he was a patriot ; Blind Harry had insured that 
Scotland and Scottish independence should be to him a 
prejudice that was also an inspiration. Even his boy- 
hood had felt the desire to realize this inspiration, a 
vague but burning wish : — 

" That I for poor auld Scotland's sake, 
Some usefu' plan or book could make. 

Or sinoj a sang at least. 
The rough burr-thistle, spreading wide 

Amang the bearded bear, 
I turnM the weeder-clips aside. 
And spared the symbol dear. 
No nation, no station, 

My envy e'er could raise ; 
A Scot still, but blot still, 
I knew nae higher praise." 



SELECTED CRITICAL STUDIES OF BURNS. 43 

He has said the same thing more than once in his 
letters, but for thoughts hke these Burns' only natural 
expression is in verse. — William A. Craigie. 



THE YOUNG DEMOCRACY S POET-PROPHET. 

The scholarly Gray had written of the poor with 
refinement and taste, surrounding them with a certain 
poetic halo ; but Burns spoke not about, but for them, 
by his birthright and heritage of poverty and labor. 
The young democracy, hurrying on the day through the 
labors of Brindley the mechanic, Hargreaves the poor 
weaver, or Watt the mathematical-instrument maker's 
apprentice, finds its poet-prophet in a farmer's boy of 
the Scotch lowlands. The natural music, the irresistible 
melody, of Burns' songs was learned, not from the prin- 
ciples of literary lawgivers, but from the songs of the 
people. In their captivating lilt, their rich humor, their 
note of elemental passion, is revealed the soul of the peas- 
ant class. ''Poetry," wrote Wordsworth, who preached 
a little later the superiority of inspiration to artifice, 
''poetry comes from the heart and goes to the heart." 
This is eminently true of the poetry of Burns, whose 
best songs have that heartfelt and broadly human qual- 
ity which penetrates where more cultured verse fails to 
enter, and which outlasts the most elaborate productions 
of a less instinctive art. — Banco ast. 

THE PASSIONATE TREATMENT OF LOVE. 

One element, the passionate treatment of love, had 
been on the whole absent from our poetry since the 



44 



LITERA TURE. 



Restoration. It was restored by Robert Burns. In 
his love-songs we hear again, even more simply, more 
directly, the same natural music which in the age of 
Elizabeth enchanted the world. It was as a love-poet 
that he began to write, and the first edition of his poems 
appeared in 1786. But he was not only the poet of 
love, but also of the new excitement about mankind. 
Himself poor, he sang the poor. He did the same work 
in Scotland in 1786 which Crabbe began in England in 
1783, and Cowper in 1785 ; and it is worth remarking 
how the dates run together. As in Cowper, so also in 
Burns, the further widening of human sympathies is 
shown in his tenderness for animals. He carried on 
also the Celtic elements of Scottish poetry, but the rat- 
tling fun of the ''Jolly Beggars " and of ''Tam o' Shan- 
ter " is united to a life-like jxiinting of human character 
which is peculiarly English. A large gentleness of feel- 
ing often made his wit into that true humor which is 
more English than Celtic, and the passionate pathos of 
such poems as " Mary in Heaven " is connected with this 
vein of English humor. The special nationality of Scot- 
tish poetry is as strong in Burns as in any of his prede- 
cessors, but it is also mingled with a larger view of man 
than the merely national one. Nor did he fail to carry 
on the Scottish love of nature ; though he shows the 
English influence in using natural description not for the 
love of nature alone, but as a background for human 
love. It was the strength of his passions and the weak- 
ness of his moral will which made his poetry and spoilt 
his life. — Stopford A. Brooke. 



SELECTED CRITICAL STUDIES OF BURNS. 45 



THE ORIGIN OF THE '^ ADDRESS TO THE DEIL. 

One of the delights of Miss Begg's girlhood was the 
converse of Burns' mother concerning her first-born 
and favorite child, the poet, a theme of which she never 
tired. Miss Begg^ remembered her as a ''chirk" old 
lady, with snapping black eyes and an abundant stock of 
legends and ballads. She used to declare that Bobbie 
had often heard her sing " Auld Lang Syne " in his boy- 
hood ; hence it would appear that, at most, he only 
revised that precious old song. Miss Begg more than 
once heard the mother tell, with manifest gusto, this 
incident of their residence at Lochlea : Robert was 
already inclined to be wild, and between visiting his 
sweetheart Ellison Begbie — ''the lass of the twa spark- 
ling, roguish een " — and attending the Tarbolton club and 
Masonic lodge, was abroad until an unseemly hour every 
night, and his mother or Isabella [his sister, afterwards 
Mrs. Begg] sat up to let him in. His anxious sire, the 
"priest-hke father" of the "Cotter's Saturday Night," 
determined to administer an effectual rebuke to the son's 
misconduct, and one night startled the mother by an- 
nouncing significantly that he would wait to admit the 
lad. She lay for hours (Robert was later than ever that 
night), dreading the encounter between the two, till she 
heard the boy whistling " Tibbie Fowler " as he ap- 
proached. Then the door opened : the father grimly 
demanded what had kept him so late ; the son, for reply, 
gave a comical description of his meeting auld Hornie on 



^Miss Begg was Burns' niece. She was the daughter of Burns' sister, Isabella, 
who married John Begg. 



46 LITER A TURE. 

the way home, — an adventure narrated in the "Address 
to the Deil," — and next the mother heard the pah* seat 
themselves by the fire, where for two hours the father 
roared with laughter at Robert's ludicrous account of 
the evening's doings at the club, — she, meanwhile, 
nearly choking with her efforts to restrain the laughter 
which miMit remind the husband of his intended re- 
proof. Thereafter the lad stayed out as late as he 
pleased without rebuke. — Dr. T. F. Wolfe, in " A 
Literary Pilgiirnagey 

'' HIGHLAND MARY." 

Nothing in Burns' career is so startling as the inter- 
lineation of his loves ; they played about him like fire- 
flies ; he seldom remembered to be off with the old 
before he was on with the new. Allured by two kinds 
of attraction, those which were mainly sensual seem 
scarcely to have interfered with others of a higher 
strain. It is now undoubted that his white rose grew up 
and bloomed in the midst of his passion flowers. Of his 
attachment to Mary Campbell, daughter of a Campbelton 
sailor, and sometime nurse to the infant son of Gavin 
Hamilton, he was always chary of speech. There is 
little record of their intimacy previous to their betrothal 
on the second Sunday, the 14th of May, 1786, when, 
standing one on either bank of the Faille, they dipped their 
hands in the brook, and holdmg between them a Bible, — 
in the two volumes of which half-obliterated inscriptions 
still remain, — they swore everlasting fidelity. Shortly 
after she returned to her native town, where " Will you 
goto the Indies, my Mary } " and other songs were sent 



SELECTED CRITICAL STUDIES OF BURNS. 47 

to her. Having bespoken a place in Glasgow for Mar- 
tinmas, she went in the autumn to Greenock to attend 
a sick brother, and caught from him a fever which 
proved fatal at some date before October 1 2, when her 
lair was bought in the West Kirkyard, now, on her ac- 
count, the resort of pilgrims. Mrs. Begg's story of 
Burns receiving the news of her death has been called in 
question ; but how deep the buried love lay in his heart 
is known to every reader of his verse. After flowing on 
in stillness for three years, it broke forth as the inspira- 
tion of the most pathetic of his songs — 

" Thou lingering star with lessening ray," — 

composed in the course of a windy October night, when 
musing and watching the skies about the corn-ricks at 
Ellisland. Three years later, it may have been about 
the same harvest time, even on the same anniversary, 
the receding past, with a throng of images, sad and 
sweet, again swept over him, and bodied itself forth in 
the immortal lyric — 

"Ye banks and braes and streams around 
The Castle o' Montgomery," 

which is the last we hear of Highland Mary. — Professor 
Nichols. 

'' clarinda." 

At last, however, out of all patience with his publisher, 
and recognizing the futility of his hopes of preferment, 
he had resolved early in December to leave Edinburgh, 
when he was compelled to stay against his will. A 
double accident befell him ; he was introduced to a Mrs. 



48 LIT ERA TURE. 

Maclehose, and three days afterwards, through the care- 
lessness of a drunken coachman, he was thrown from a 
carriage and had his knee severely bruised. The latter 
was an accident that kept him confined to his room for 
a time, and from which he quickly recovered ; but the 
meeting with Mrs. Maclehose was a serious matter, and 
for both most unfortunate in its results. 

It was while he was " on the rack of his present 
agony" that the Sylvander-Clarmda correspondence was 
begun and continued. That much may be said in 
excuse for Burns. A man, especially one with the pas- 
sion and sensitiveness of a poet, cannot be expected to 
write in all sanity when he is racked by the pain of an 
injured limb. Certainly the poet does not show up in a 
pleasant light in this absurd interchange of gasping 
epistles ; nor does Mrs. Maclehose. '' I like the idea of 
Arcadian names in a commerce of this kind," he unguard- 
edly admits. The most obvious comment that occurs to 
the mind of the reader is that they ought never to have 
been written. It is a pity they were written ; more than 
a pity they were ever published. . . . Occasionally he is 
natural in them, but rarely. *' I shall certainly be 
ashamed of scrawling whole sheets of incoherence." 
We trust he was. The letters are false in sentiment, 
stilted in diction, artificial in morality. We have a pic- 
ture of the poet all through trying to batter himself into 
a passion he does not feel, into love of an accomplished 
and intellectual woman ; while in his heart's core is reg- 
istered the image of Jean Armour, the mother of his 
children. He shows his paces before Clarinda and tears 
passion to tatters in inflated prose ; he poses as a stylist, 
a moralist, a religious enthusiast, a poet, a man of the 



SELECTED CRITICAL STUDIES OF BURNS. 49 

world, and now and again accidentally he assumes the 
face and figure of Robert Burns. . . . 

Clarinda comes out of the correspondence better than 
Sylvander. Her letters are more natural and vastly 
more clever. She grieves to hear of his accident, and 
sympathises with him in his suffering ; were she his 
sister she would call and see him. He is too romantic 
in his style of address, and must remember she is a 
married woman. Would he wait like Jacob seven years 
for a wife } And perhaps be disappointed ! She is not 
unhappy : religion has been her balm for every woe. . . . 
She could well believe him when he said that no woman 
could love as ardently as himself. . . . But he must not 
rave ; he must limit himself to friendship. The evening 
of their third meeting was one of the most exquisite she 
had ever experienced. Only he must now know she has 
faults. She means well, but is liable to become the 
victim of her sensibility. She, too, now prefers the 
religion of the bosom. She cannot deny his power over 
her ; would he pay another evening visit on Saturday } 

When the poet is leaving Edinburgh, Clarinda is 
heartbroken. '' Oh, let the scenes of nature remind you 
of Clarinda ! In winter, remember the dark shades of 
her fate ; in summer, the warmth of her friendship ; in 
autumn, her glowing wishes to bestow plenty on all ; and 
let spring animate you with hopes that your friend may 
yet surmount the wintry blasts of life, and revive to 
taste a springtime of happiness. At all events, Syl- 
vander, the storms of life will quickly pass, and one 
unbounded spring encircle all. Love, there, is not a 
crime. I charge you to meet me there, O God ! I must 
lay down my pen." 



50 



LIT ERA TURE. 



Poor Clarinda ! Well for her peace of mind that the 
poet was leaving her ; well for Burns, also, U'lat he was 
leaving Clarinda and Edinburgh. Only one thing re- 
mained for both to do, and it had been wise, to burn 
their letters. Would that Clarinda had been as much 
alive to her own good name, and the poet's fair fame, as 
Peggy Chalmers,^ who did not preserve her letters from 
Burns ! — Gabriel Setoun. 

burns' love-songs. 

Burns felt that in deep, honest love lay all that was 
sweetest and best in life, and that in singing of it he was 
discharging his truest mission as a poet. '* Love," he 
wrote to his friend Cunningham, ''is the Alpha and 
Omega of human enjoyment. All the pleasures, all the 
happiness of my humble compeers, flow immediately and 
directly from this delicious source. It is the spark of 
celestial fire which lights up the wintry hut of poverty, 
and makes the cheerless mansion warm, comfortable, and 
gay. It is the emanation of Divinity that preserves the 
sons and daughters of rustic labor from degenerating into 
the brutes' with which they daily hold converse. With- 
out it, life to the poor inmates of the cottage would be a 
damning gift." To one who could write of love with 
such enthusiasm, the passion itself was sure to be an in- 
spiration, and out of it sprang some of his most world-famed 
lyrics. Some of these, like his early songs, are records 
of real love ; others are only poetic fictions, even when 
inspired by actual objects of admiration ; others again 



iMiss Margaret Chalmers, Gavin Hamilton's relative. Eleven letters of Burns to 
Miss Chalmers are preserved. 




^m 



mm^i 



SELECTED CRITICAL STUDIES OF BURNS. 



53 



are of perfectly general content, the embodiment of a 
love that is not determined by person, time, or place. It 
was difficult, however, almost impossible, for Burns to 
write a song to any fair one in whom he was at all inter- 
ested without assuming the tone of the lover. — W. A. 
Craigie, in ''A Primer of Burns'' 

BURNS THE POET OF THE SCOTTISH PEOPLE. 

No poet ever lived more constantly and more inti- 
mately in the hearts of a people. With their mirth, or 
with their melancholy, how often do his '' native wood- 
notes wild " affect the sitters by the ingles of low- 
roofed homes, till their hearts overflow with feelings 
that place them on a level, as moral creatures, with the 
most enlightened in the land, and more than reconcile 
them with, make them proud of, the condition assigned 
them by Providence! There they see with pride the 
reflection of the character and condition of their own 
order. That pride is one of the best natural props of 
poverty ; for, supported by it, the poor envy not the 
rich. They exult to know and to feel that they have 
had treasures bequeathed to them by one of themselves 
— treasures of the heart, the intellect, the fancy, and 
the imagination, of which the possession and the enjoy- 
ment are one and the same, as long as they preserve 
their integrity and their independence. The poor man, 
as he speaks of Robert Burns, always holds up his head 
and regards you with an elated look. A tender thought 
of the '' Cotter's Saturday Night," or a bold thought of 
'* Scots wha ha'e wi' Wallace bled," may come across 
him ; and he who in such a spirit loves home and coun- 



54 



LIT ERA TURE. 



try, by whose side may he not walk an equal in the 
broad eye of day as it shines over our Scottish hills ? 
This is true popularity. Thus interpreted, the word 
sounds well, and recovers its ancient meaning. The 
land ''made blithe, with plough and harrow" — the 
broomy or the heathery braes — the holms by the river's 
side — the forest where the woodman's ringing axe no 
more disturbs the cushat — the deep dell where all day 
long sits solitary plaided boy or girl watching the kine 
or the sheep — the moorland hut without any garden — 
the lowland cottage, whose garden glows like a very 
orchard, when crimsoned with fruit-blossoms most beau- 
tiful to behold — the sylvan homestead sending its reek 
aloft over the huge sycamore that blackens on the hill- 
side — the straw-roofed village gathering with small 
bright crofts its many white gable-ends round and about 
the modest manse, and the kirk-spire covered with the 
pine tree that shadows its horologe — the small, quiet, 
half-slated, half -thatched rural town, — there resides, 
and will forever reside, the immortal genius of Burns. — 
Professor Wilson (" Christopher North "). 

WHAT burns has DONE FOR SCOTLAND AND THE 
SCOTCH. 

No wonder the peasantry of Scotland have loved 
Burns as perhaps never people loved a poet. He not 
only sympathized with the wants, the trials, the joys 
and sorrows of their obscure lot, but he interpreted 
these to themselves, and interpreted them to others, 
and this, too, in their own language made musical, and 
glorified by genius. He made the poorest ploughman 



SELECTED CRITICAL STUDIES OF BURNS. 55 

proud of his station and his toil, since Robbie Burns 
had shared and had sung them. He awoke a sympathy 
for them in many a heart that otherwise would never 
have known it. In looking up to him, the Scottish 
people have seen an impersonation of themselves on a 
large scale — of themselves, both in their virtues and in 
their vices. 

Secondly, Burns in his poetry was not only the in- 
terpreter of Scotland's peasantry, he was the restorer of 
her nationality. When he appeared, the spirit of Scot- 
land was at a low ebb. The fatigue that followed a 
century of religious strife, the extinction of her parlia- 
ment, the stern suppression of the Jacobite risings, the 
removal of all symbols of her royalty and nationality, 
had all but quenched the ancient spirit. Englishmen 
despised Scotchmen, and Scotchmen seemed ashamed 
of themselves and of their country. A race of literary 
men had sprung up in Edinburgh, who, as to national 
feeling, were entirely colourless, Scotchmen in nothing 
except their dwelling-place. The thing they most 
dreaded was to be convicted of a Scotticism. Among 
these learned cosmopolitans in walked Burns, who with 
the instinct of genius chose for his subject that Scottish 
life which they ignored, and for his vehicle that vernacu- 
lar which they despised, and who, touching the springs 
of long- forgotten emotions, brought back on the hearts 
of his countrymen a tide of patriotic feeling to which 
they had long been strangers. 

And though he accomplished but a small part of what 
he once hoped to do, yet we owe it to him first of all 
that "the old kingdom" has not wholly sunk into a 
province. If Scotchmen to-day love and cherish their 



56 LITERATURE. 

country with a pride unknown to their ancestors of the 
last century, if strangers of all countries look on Scot- 
land as a land of romance, this we owe in great measure 
to Burns, who first turned the tide, which Scott after- 
wards carried to full flood. All that Scotland had done 
and suffered, her romantic history, the manhood of her 
people, the beauty of her scenery, would have disap- 
peared in modern commonplace and manufacturing ugli- 
ness, if she had been left without her two '' sacred 
poets." — J. C. Shairp. 

burns' ENGLISH. 

All Burns' best pieces are written in his native dia- 
lect. He knew English — that is, the dialect of edu- 
cation and of literature — well, and could write in it 
fluently and with vigour ; but it was not his vernacular, 
and he could not express in it, with the essential sensi- 
tiveness and delicacy, the ideas and emotions that called 
for an outlet. So strangely intimate in the art of 
poetry is the connection between thought and language, 
that no language in any sense foreign can suffice for the 
representation of inmost and purest thought ; no trans- 
lation is endurable. Whenever Burns writes in general 
English, he becomes comparatively languid and ineffec- 
tive. David with the sling and stone of his youth can 
more than match even Goliath ; with Saul's armour on, 
he is but as, or less than, any other Hebrew ; and so 
Burns with his native Ayrshire, and his acquired Eng- 
lish. He essayed again and again to write in the lat- 
ter ; but nature was stronger than all his efforts. — Pro- 
fessor J. W. Hales, m ^^ Longer English Poems.'' 



SELECTED CRITICAL STUDIES. 57 



CARLYLE ON BURNS AND BYRON. 

Byron and Burns were sent forth as missionaries to 
their generation, to teach it a higher doctrine, a purer 
truth ; they had a message to dehver, which left them 
no rest till it was accomplished ; in dim throes of pain, 
this divine behest lay smouldering within them, for they 
knew not what it meant, and felt it only in mysterious 
anticipation, and they had to die without articulately 
uttering it. They are in the camp of the unconverted, 
yet not as high messengers of rigorous though benig- 
nant Truth, but as soft flattering singers, and in pleas- 
ant fellowship will they live there ; they are first adu- 
lated, then persecuted ; they accomplish little for 
others ; they find no peace for themselves, but only 
death and the peace of the grave. We confess it is 
not without a certain mournful awe that we view the 
fate of these noble souls, so richly gifted, yet ruined to 
so little purpose with all their gifts. It seems to us 
there is a stern moral taught in this piece of history, — 
twice told us in our own time ! Surely to men of like 
genius, if there be any such, it carries with it a lesson 
of deep, impressive significance. Surely it would be- 
come such a man, furnished for the highest of all enter- 
prises, — that of being the poet of his age, — to con- 
sider well what it is that he attempts, and in what spirit 
he attempts it. For the words of Milton are true in all 
times, and were never truer than in this : '' He who 
would write heroic poems must make his whole life a 
heroic poem." If he cannot first so make his life, then 
let him hasten from this arena; for neither its lofty 



, — -^ / 

/ 



58 LITERATURE. 

glories nor its fearful perils are fit for him. Let him 
dwindle into a modish ballad-monger ; let him worship 
and besing the idols of the time, and the time will not 
fail to reward him, — if, indeed, he can endure to live in 
that capacity ! Byron and Burns could not live as idol- 
priests, but the fire of their own hearts consumed them, 
and better it was for them that they could not. For 
it is not in the favor of the great or of the small, but in 
a life of truth, and in the inexpugnable citadel of his 
own soul, that a Byron's or a Burns' strength must lie. 

carlyle's final estimate of burns. 

With our readers in general, with men of right feel- 
ing anywhere, we are not required to plead for Burns. 
In pitying admiration he lies enshrined in all our hearts, 
in a far nobler mausoleum than that one of marble ; 
neither will his works, even as they are, pass away from 
the memory of men. While the Shakespeares and 
Miltons roll on like mighty rivers through the country 
of Thought, bearing fleets of traffickers and assiduous 
pearl fishers on their waves, this little Valclusa foun- 
tain wdll also arrest our eye ; for this also is of Nature's 
own and most cunning workmanship, bursts from the 
depths of the earth with a full gushing current, into 
the light of day; and often will the traveller turn 
aside to drink of its clear waters, and muse among 
its rocks and pines ! 



THE HOME OF ROBERT BURNS. 

By Margaret Eva Cameron. 



" I '11 be more respected a hundred years after 1 am dead than T am at 
present." 

What a depth of sadness, pathos, and alas ! too, bit- 
terness, can we read in these last words of Scotland's 
greatest bard. Yet never has human prophecy been 
more triumphantly fulfilled than this one, spoken in the 
ear of the devoted wife a century ago, as Burns realized 
he was, as we Scots say, a '' done " man. 

Every decade since July 21, 1796, has added its quota 
of praise, until we have at last reached a summit of 
appreciation so widespread and international that the 
man who cannot admire must certainly refrain from 
decrying ; for to all English-speaking peoples Shake- 
speare the dramatist, and Burns the lyrist, are immortal. 

At first sight Shakespeare's connection in any way 
with Burns may seem extraneous to the subject in hand ; 
but not so, for are not Stratford and Alloway the shrines 
of English literature "^ 

A visit to both very quickly brings out that truly 
*' Facts are chiels that winna ding," and that though the 
genius of Shakespeare is matchless, the Ayrshire poet 
has a stronger grip on the affections of the masses. 
Few, if any, of the poorest Scots but know and delight 
in Burns ; hundreds, even thousands, of English rustics 
neither care for nor know of Shakespeare. Compulsory 

59 



6o LITER A TURE. 

school board education has already had its effect ; but 
Stratford-on-Avon is not conveniently easy of access, 
and want of time rather than want of money keeps 
many a one away. Indeed, a glance at the visitors' list 
there very quickly shows that Americans and colonials 
predominate, whereas at Alloway there are more than 
twice as many annual visitors, and of these the far 
greater proportion are Scottish working-folk. 

J. M. Barrie, Ian Maclaren, and George Macdonald 
have all brought before the world the fact that reticence 
or suppression of emotion is the strongest characteristic 
trait of the Scot. 

This is indeed true to life. Burns proving the great 
exception to the rule. Over everything connected with 
his name a glamour and enthusiasm work like a magi- 
cian's spell ; his birthday is an annual fete ; his songs 
are encored again and again, even if indifferently sung; 
clubs and societies in hundreds delight to be called by 
his name ; statues and monuments are still set up to his 
memory ; and his homes and grave are shrines for pil- 
grims just as truly as were ever martyrs' shrines in 
mediaeval days. 

In 1896, the hundredth year after the poet's death, 
we, nationally, broke through all reserve, and even dared 
to pose and to pose successfully. We covered the thatch 
roof of his humble birthplace with evergreens, and 
wreathed its ''bonnie wee windows" with laurel and 
bay, while its door was but a peg for flowers. His por- 
trait in floral frame and his name in Scottish thistle 
blooms were placed over it, and under such triumphant 
keystone did all enter reverently. 

At Alloway kirk, the monument, the Auld Brig o' 




Burns' Monument, Alloway. 




The Twa Brigs o' Ayr. 



THE HOME OF ROBERT BURNS. 



63 



Doon, St. Mungo'swell — in Ayr, Mauchline, and every 
village in the Burns country — did the same wild, unna- 
tional enthusiasm prevail, while at Dumfries, around his 
grave, were gathered delegates from every Burns society 
at home and abroad, bearers of the most exquisite floral 




Alloway Kirk and Burial Place of the Burns Family. 



offerings. Even from the parish church — representa- 
tive of that kirk against which he ran tilt — hung the 
nation's flag of the lion rampant, and beneath it — 

" Such graves as his are pilgrims' shrines." 

Well might the newspapers say, ^' America was splen- 
didly represented " ; for not a State of the Union but had 
its messenger bearing flowers, and side by side with the 
holly and daisies picked from Mossgiel farm, and feathery 



64 



LITER A TURE. 



palms from the karroos of South Africa, was laid the 
wreath of ivy and laurel plucked from Walt Whitman's 
grave. And as fitting close to such a national day, was 
Lord Rosebery's speech, an oration on a national poet 
and literature which, will live in literature the equal of 
any of Burke's panegyrics. So for the first time in the 
nation's history Scotsmen became '^ a sort of poetical 
Mohammedans gathered at a sort of poetical Mecca" ; 
and to this Mecca may our children and grandchildren 
continue to come, remembering — 

*' To make a happy fireside clime 
For weans and wife, 
Is the true pathos and sublime 
Of human life." 




The Auld Brig o' Doon. 



THE HOME OF ROBERT BURNS. 



65 




Burns' Monument, Ayr. 



Starting from St. Enoch's station, Glasgow, by express 
train, we are rapidly whirled through northern Ayrshire, 
and in little more than an hour Ayr — 

" Wham ne'er a town surpasses 
For honest men and bonnie lasses " — 

is reached. 

As we leave the station we realize immediately that 
here Burns reigns supreme ; for his magnificent monu- 
ment, erected in 1891, stands before us. 

A colossal figure in bronze represents the poet wrapt 
in deep thought, with arms partly folded. The figure 
faces toward Alloway, two miles distant to the south. 



66 LITERATURE. 

The pedestal of Aberdeen granite, twelve feet high, 
is very effectively treated. On its four sides are bronze 
panels in bas-relief of scenes from the poet's works, — 
''Tarn o' Shanter at the Brig o' Doon," ''The Cotter's 
Saturday Night," "The Jolly Beggars," and last, but by 
no means least, "The Parting of Burns and Highland 
Mary," which was the gift of twenty-five Americans, 
representing twelve States of the Union. 

The effect is greatly heightened by beautiful flower- 
beds and shrubs, the whole enclosed by a handsome 
railing. The statue and its pedestal cost over $7,000, 
the panels, grounds, and railing being gifts. There are 
few relics of Burns in the town ; but we can still cross 
"The Auld Brig," and visit the " Tam o' Shanter" inn, 
verified as the haunt of the original Thomas Graham of 
Shanter and his crony, the Souter (shoemaker). We 
may sit in their chairs in the low-ceiled room upstairs, 
and even drink if we will from their wooden " cogie." 
But on the street below four-horse busses and brakes, 
laden with folk " of honest, sonsy face," pass along one 
after the other, and so we descend to hail the first with 
vacant seats. 

For a fare of threepence (6 cents) we can be driven 
to Alloway and all its sights, or we may hire a smaller 
wagonette, and thereby insure more comfort as well as 
time. But on the public conveyances one better realizes 
how truly the people love " Robbie." Men and women, 
old and young, weavers, souters, miners, ploughmen, ma- 
sons, shepherds, each and all sing snatches of his songs, 
the gay rather than the grave ; for is it not holiday to 
them, and the shadows of life should be in the back- 
ground } 



THE HOME OF ROBERT BURNS. 67 

What a revelation such a drive is ! With our cultured 
appreciation of the bard we can exactly, even enthusias- 
tically, yield Burns his proper place in literature. We may 
have ranked him with Milton, or Wordsworth even ; and 
DOW we suddenly realize that they are not quotable as 
he is, and that, in the midst of such genuine heartfelt 
love, ours is but gilded alloy. 

But very soon the humble cottage by the roadside is 
reached ; and on paying the entry money of twopence 
(4 cents) we pass into a large room, on the walls of 
which are hung various engravings, and sundry poems 
and songs written out in the poet's bold, clear hand. 
But such things are of minor importance ; for every one 
hurries into the small kitchen with its ''earth " floor, 
" box " bed, the old wide chimney with '' swey " and pot 
"■ cleeks," the plate rack, dresser, eight-day clock, chairs, 
and table, — all relics of the poet's early home. Here 
truly can we picture the '' Cotter's Saturday Night," as 
we gaze at the fireplace, and people its humble, happy 
circle. But we must at last move on, for the little 
kitchen is so crowded that many are waiting their turn 
outside. 

In the hall behind the cottage we see many portraits 
of the poet, letters, and curios more quaint than valu- 
able, etc. Until 1881 the house was licensed as an inn, 
but the trustees of the national monument bought it for 
$20,000, and turned it into a tea and coffee house, and 
so picnic parties make it their headquarters. 

A little farther along the road stand the ruins of Al- 
loway kirk, and close to the entrance-gate are the graves 
of William Burns his father, Agnes Brown his mother, 
and Mrs. Begg, his youngest sister, who died in 



68 LITER A TURK. 

1856. On the stone are the gifted son's well-known 

lines : — 

" O ye whose cheek the tear of pity stains, 

Draw near with pious reverence and attend ! 
Here lie the loving husband's dear remains, 
The tender father and the generous friend ; 

" The pitying heart that felt for human woe ; 

The dauntless heart, that feared no human pride ; 
The friend of man, to vice alone a foe : 
♦ For even his failings leaned to virtue's side.' " 

The church is roofless ; its rafters even have been 
turned into '' relics," and dispersed far and near over the 
world. The bell still hangs in the gable, and bears date 
of 1657 ; but the church was founded about 15 16. 

The beautiful monument is almost opposite and stands 
sixty feet high. It is nearly a copy of that on the Cal- 
ton Hill in Edinburgh, its style being a harmonious 
blending of Greek and Roman architecture. 

The base is triangular, indicative of the three districts 
of Ayrshire, — Carrick, Kyle, and Cunninghame, — and 
within is a handsome room. Here we see many things 
of interest, — most notable the two half bibles, the in- 
scriptions quite legible, presented by Burns to Highland 
Mary with a lock of his hair. 

Outside in the gardens one is tempted to sit and gaze 
over the river Doon ; but before leaving, the statue of 
Tarn o' Shanter and Souter Johnny must be visited. 
The Souter's apron, his turned-in toes, and the leer on 
his face are startlingly life-like ; and Tam's worsted 
stockings appear real ''hodden gray." 

On the Auld Brig a merry party are singing " Ye 
Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon," and its echoes come 



THE HOME OF ROBERT BURNS. 



69 



over the water sweetly as we stand by St. Mungo's 
well. As we look upward at this beautiful national 
monument erected at a cost of ^16,000, we might sadly 
reflect that money for Burns dead is not lacking, and 
that the many twopences of admission would have been 
to him a handsome fortune. 

We tear ourselves away at last ; and, somehow, we 
realize that the indefinable something has affected the 




PoosiE Nansie's Inn, Mauchline Station. 



spirits of all, and that the grave rather than the gay pre- 
dominates on our way back. One fault only would we 
find, — the sign upon the cottage wall tells us that here 
was born Burns, the Ayrshire poet. Is he not Burns, 
our national poet } From Ayr as a centre, we can make 
daily trips to well-known scenes, such as Tam's farm 
and Kirkoswald churchyard, where he and the Souter lie 



JO 



LITERATURE. 



buried. Twelve miles distant by road is Mauchline, half 
a mile from which stands Mossgiel, where the poet lived 
for seven years, and where, too, he wrote so many of his 
finest poems. Here grow the daisies, " wee, modest, 
crimson-tipped flowers," and here, too, cowered the " mou- 
sie in his biel." Jean Armour, his devoted wife, was one 
of Mauchline's "six proper young belles." Poosie Nan- 
sie's inn, the scene of the Jolly Beggars, stands opposite 
the churchyard gate ; the churchyard recalls '' The Holy 
Fair"; and, of the poet's friends now sleeping in its 
"monies," we must remember Mary Morrison, the sub- 
ject of one of his tenderest songs. The " Braes o' 
Ballochmyle" are near; and in the woody shades of 
Montgomery, Highland Mary and he together spent 
"one day of parting love." Turn where we will, every 
field and tree and stream has its associations. In Dum- 
fries, sixty miles toward the English border, we have 
only saddest of memories. Here the poet, to use a 
most expressive Scotch phrase, " fairly forgot himself " ; 
and the tragedy of his life rapidly was brought to a close. 
His home here somehow lacks interest, and we turn to 
the grand mausoleum in St. Michael's churchyard under- 
neath which he now rests. Its sculptured marble tells 
his own tale : " The poetic genius of my own country 
found me as the prophetic bard Elijah did Elisha — at 
the plough — and threw her inspiring mantle over me." 
The year 1 896 was so notable that one naturally con- 
cluded there would be comparatively few visitors to Al- 
loway in 1897, but in that September the tale was the 
same of daily eager crowds ; and so it goes on continu- 
ally. One party, however, excelled in interest ; for the 
rector of Stratford-on-Avon and members of the Shake- 



THE HOME OF ROBERT BURNS. 73 

spearean society visited the cottage, and hung up on the 
box-bed a wreath of laurel picked from Shakespeare's 
garden, as " a token of affection from all Shakespeareans 
for the poet of Scotland." On the card attached were 
the great bard's lines : — 

" To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep, 
He had the dialect and different skill. 
Catching the passions in his craft of will." 

It was, indeed, a visible link between Stratford and 
Alloway. May every one realize on leaving Alloway 
that it is good for him to have been here ; and may we 
nevex- forget that our most magnificent monuments are 
but small homages to a man from whom we have received 
so much, and all sink into insignificance in comparison 
with that humble thatched cottage. 

Margaret Eva Cameron. 



READINGS FROM BURNS. 



THE COTTER S SATURDAY NIGHT. 

INSCRIBED TO ROBERT ATKEN, ESQ., OF AYR. 

Le^ not Avibition mock their useful toil. 
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure ; 
Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile. 
The short but simple annals of the Poor. 

Gray. 

My lov'd, my honoured, much respected friend ! 

No mercenary bard his homage pays : 
With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end ; 

My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise : 
To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays, 

The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene ; 
The native feelings strong, the guileless ways ; 

What Aiken m a cottage would have been ; 
Ah ! tho' his worth unknown, far happier there, I ween. 

November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh ; ' 

The shortening winter-day is near a close ; 
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh ; - 

The blackening trains o' craws •' to their repose : 
The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes. 

This night his weekly moil * is at an end. 
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, 

Hoping the morn" in ease and rest to spend. 
And weary, o"'er the moor, his course does hameward bend. 

At length his lonely cot appears in view. 
Beneath the shelter of an ag^d tree ; 

1 Moan. - Plough. 3 Crows. * Toil. ^ Morrow. 

74 



READINGS FROM BURNS. 75 

Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher ^ through 
To meet their Dad, wi' flichterin " noise an' glee. 

His wee bit ingle, ^ blinkin' bonnily, 

His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie\s smile, 

The lisping infant prattling on his knee, 
Does a' his weary carking cares beguile, 

An' makes him quite forget his labour an' his toil. 

Belyve,* the elder bairns come drapping in, 

At service out, amang the farmers roun' ; 
Some ca' ^ the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin ° 

A cannie ' errand to a neebor town : * 
Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown, 

In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e'e, 
Comes hame, perhaps, to shew a braw ^ new gown, 

Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee,^" 
To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be. 

With joy unfeign'd brothers and sisters meet,. 

An' each for other's weelfare kindly spiers : " 
The social hours, swift-wing'd, unnotic'd fleet; 

Each tells the uncos ^^ that he sees or hears ; 
The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years ; 

Anticipation forward points the view. 
The mother, wi' her needle an' her sheers, ^^ 

Gars auld claes ^* look amaist as weel's the new ; 
The father mixes a' wi' admonition due. 

Their master's an' their mistress's command, 

The younkers a' are warned to obey ; 
An' mind their labours wi' an eydent ^^ hand. 

An' ne'er, tho' out o' sight, to jauk ^^ or play : 
*' An' O ! be sure to fear the Lord alvvay ! 

An' mind your duty, duly, morn an' night t 
Lest in temptation's path ye gang ^^ astray, 

Implore His counsel and assisting might: 
They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright ! " 

1 Stagger. 2 Fluttering. ^ Fireplace. * By and by. ° Drive. ^ Atten- 
tively run. ■^ Quiet. ^ Neighboring farm. ^ Fine. ^^ Hardly earned wages. 
11 Inquire.s. 12 Strange things. ^^ Scissors. " Makes old clothes. i^ Diligent. 
16 Dally. 1' Go. 



76 



LITERATURE. 



But hark ! a rap comes gently to the door. 

Jenny, wha kens ^ the meaning o' the same, 
Tells how a neebor lad cam o'er the moor, 

To do some errands, and convoy ' her hame. 
The wily mother sees the conscious flame 

Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek : 
Wi" heart-struck, anxious care, inquires his name. 

While Jenny haftlins^ is afraid to speak; 
Weel pleas'd the mother hears, it's nae wild, worthless rake. 

Wi' kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben ; ^ 

A strappan youth ; he taks the mothers eye ; 
Blythe Jenny sees the visit's no ill ta'en ; 

The father cracks " of horses, pleughs, and kye." 
The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy, 

But blate and laithfu',' scarce can weel behave ; 
The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy 

What makes the youth sae bashfu' an' j-ae grave; 
Wecl-pleas'd to think her bairn's respected like the lave.^ 

happy love ! where love like this is found ! 

O heart-felt raptures ! bliss beycxnd compare ! 

1 've pac^d much this weary, mortal round. 

And sage experience bids me this declare — 
" If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare, 

One cordial in this melancholy vale, 
'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair, 

In other's arms breathe out the tender tale. 
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the ev'ning gale."" 

Is there, in human form, that bears a heart — 

A wretch ! a villain ! lost to love and truth ! 
That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art. 

Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth ? 
Curse on his perjur'd arts ! dissembling smooth ! 

Are honour, virtue, conscience, all exil'd ? 
Is there no pity, no relenting ruth. 

Points to the parents fondling o'er their child? 
Then paints the ruin'd maid, and their distraction wild! 

1 Who knows. 2 Accompany. ^ Half. ■* Into the room. "Chats. •= Kine, 

cattle. "' Bashful and hesitating. * Like other people. 



READINGS FROM BURNS. 77 

But now the supper crowns their simple board, 

The halesome parritch/ chief o' Scotia's food; 
The soupe their only Hawkie ^ does afford, 

That 'yont the hallan ^ snugly chows her cood. 
The dame brings forth in complimental mood, 

To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd kebbuck, fell ; * 
An' aft he 's prest, an' aft he ca's it guid ; 

The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell. 
How 't was a towmond ® auld, sin' lint was i' the bell.^ 

The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face. 

They, round the ingle, ^ form a circle wide ; 
The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace. 

The big ha'-Bible, ance * his father's pride : 
His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, 

His lyart haffets ^ wearing thin an' bare ; 
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, 

He wales ^'* a portion with judicious care, 
And " Let us worship God ! " he says, with solemn air. 

They chant their artless notes in simple guise ; 

They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim : 
Perhaps " Dundee's " wild warbling measures rise. 

Or plaintive " Martyrs," worthy of the name ; 
Or noble '* Elgin " beets ^^ the heav'nward flame, 

The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays : 
Compar'd with these, Italian trills are tame; 

The tickl'd ears no heartfelt raptures raise ; 
Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise. 

The priest-like father reads the sacred page. 

How Abram was the friend of God on high ; 
Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage 

With Amalek's ungracious progeny ; 
Or how the royal bard did groaning lie 

Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire ; 
Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry ; 

1 Wholesome porridge, 2 White-faced cow. ^ Partition wall. * Well-saved 

cheese, tasty. ^ Twelvemonth. 6 Flax was in flower. "^ Fireplace. ^ Once. 

» Gray sidelocks. lo Selects. ii Feeds. 



yS LIT ERA TURE. 

Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire ; 
Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre. 

Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme, 

How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed ; 
How He, who bore in Heaven the second name, 

Had not on earth whereon to lay His head ; 
How His first followers and servants sped ; 

The precepts sage they wrote to many a land : 
How he, who lone in Patmos banished, 

Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand ; 
And heard great BabUon's doom pronounced by Heaven's 
command. 

Then kneeling down, to Heaven's Eternal King, 

The saint, the father, and the husband prays : 
Hope " springs exulting on triumphant wing," 

That thus they all shall meet in future days : 
There ever bask in uncreated rays. 

No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear. 
Together hymning their Creator's praise. 

In such society, yet still more dear ; 
While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere. 

Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride. 

In all the pomp of method, and of art. 
When men display to congregations wide, 

Devotion's ev'ry grace, except the heart ! 
The Power, incensM, the pageant will desert, 

The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole ; 
But haply, in some cottage far apart. 

May hear, well pleas'd, tlie language of the soul; 
And in his Book of Life the inmates poor enrol. 

Then homeward all take off their sev'ral way ; 

The youngling cottagers retire to rest : 
The parent-pair their secret homage pay. 

And proffer up to Heav'n the warm request, 
That He who stills the raven's clam'rous nest. 

And decks the lily fair in flovv'ry pride, 



READINGS FROM BURNS. 79 

Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best. 
For them and for their little ones provide ; 
But chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine preside. 

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, 

Tliat makes her lov'd at home, rever'd abroad : 
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, 

*' An honest man 's the noblest work of God '" : 
And certes, in fair virtue's heavenly road, 

The cottage leaves the palace far behind ; 
What is a lordling's pomp? a cumbrous load, 

Disguising oft the wretch of human kind. 
Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refin'd ! 

O Scotia ! my dear, my native soil ! 

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent ! 
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil 

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content ! 
And, Oh, may Heaven their simple lives prevent 

From luxury's contagion, weak and vile ! 
Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent, 

A virtuous populace may rise the while, 
And stand a wall of fire around their much-lov'd Isle. 

O Thou! who pour'd the patriotic tide 

That streamed thro' Wallace's undaunted heart ; 
Who dar'd to, nobly, stem tyrannic pride. 

Or nobly die, the second glorious part, 
(The patriot's God, peculiarly thou art. 

His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward !) 
O never, never, Scotia's realm desert : 

But still the patriot, and the patriot-bard, 
In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard ! 



TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY, 
ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH IN APRIL, 1 786. 

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r, 
Thou 'st met me in the evil hour ; 



8o LIT ERA TURE. 

For I maun * crush amang the stoure 
Thy slender stem ; 

To spare thee now is past my pow'r, 
Thou bonnie gem. 

Alas ! it 's no thy neebor sweet, 
The bonnie lark, companion meet ! 
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet ! ' 

Wi' spreckrd breast, 
When upward-springing, blythe, to greet 

The purpling east. 

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north 
Upon thy early, humble birth ; 
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth 

Amid the storm, 
Scarce rear'd above the parent-earth 

Thy tender form. 

The flaunting flow'rs our gardens yield, 

High sheltYing woods and wa\s maun * shield ; 

But thou, beneath the random bield " 

O' clod or stane. 
Adorns the histie ° stibble-field. 

Unseen, alane. 

There, in thy scanty mantle clad. 
Thy snawie bosom sun-ward spread. 
Thou lifts thy unassuming head 

In humble guise ; 
But now the share uptears thy bed, 

And low thou lies ! 

Such is the fate of artless maid, 
Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade ! 
By love's simplicity betrayM, 

And guileless trust, 
Till she, Hke thee, all soiPd, is laid 

Low i' the dust. 

* Must. 2 Dust. 3 Moisture. * Must. ^ Shelter. ^ Dry. 



READINGS FROM BURNS, 

Such is the fate of simple bard, 

On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd! 

Unskilful he to note the card 

Of prudent lore, 
Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, 

And whelm him o'er! 

Such fate to suffering worth is giv'n. 
Who long with wants and woes has striv'n, 
By human pride or cunning driv'n 

To mis'ry's brink. 
Till wrench'd of ev'ry stay but Heav'n, 

He, ruin'd sink ! 

Ev'n thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, 
That fate is thine — no distant date ; 
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate, 

Full on thy bloom, 
Till crush'd beneath the furrow's weight, 

Shall be thy doom ! 



MAN WAS MADE TO MOURN 

A DIRGE. 

When chill November's surly blast 

Made fields and forests bare. 
One ev'ning as I wander'd forth 

Along the banks of Ayr, 
I spy'd a man, whose ag^d step 

Seem'd weary, worn with care ; 
His face was furrow'd o'er with years. 

And hoary was his hair. 

Young stranger, whither wand'rest thou? 

Began the rev'rend Sage ; 
Dost thirst of wealth thy step constrain. 

Or youthful pleasure's rage ? 



82 LITERATURE, 

Or, haply, prest with cares and woes 
Too soon thou hast began 

To wander forth, with me, to mourn 
The miseries of Man. 

The sun that overhangs yon moors, 

Out-spreading far and wide, 
Where hundreds labour to support 

A haughty lordling's pride ; 
1 Ve seen yon weary winter sun 

Twice forty times return : 
And ev'ry time has added proofs, 

That Man was made to mourn. 

O man ! while in thy early years, 

How prodigal of time ! 
Mis-spending all thy precious hours. 

Thy glorious youthful prime ! 
Alternate follies take the sway ; 

Licentious passions burn ; 
Which tenfold force give nature's law, 

That Man was made to mourn. 

Look not alone on youthful prime, 

Or manhood's active might ; 
Man then is useful to his kind, 

Supported is his right. 
But see him on the edge of life. 

With cares and sorrows worn. 
Then age and want, Oh ! ill-match'd pair 

Show Man was made to moyrn. 

A few seem favourites of fate, 

In pleasure's lap carest ; 
Yet, think not all the rich and great 

Are likewise truly blest. 
But, Oh ! what crowds in evry land 

All wretched and forlorn ! 
Thro' weary life this lesson learn, 

That Man was made to mourn. 




Statue of Burns, Dumfries. 



READINGS FROM BURNS. 85 

Many and sharp the numerous ills 

Inwoven with our frames ! 
More pointed still we make ourselves, 

Regret, remorse, and shame ! 
And man, whose heaven-erected face 

The smiles of love adorn, 
Man's inhumanity to man 

Makes countless thousands mourn ! 

See yonder poor, o'erlabour'd wight, 

So abject, mean, and vile, 
Who begs a brother of the earth 

To give him leave to toil ; 
And see his lordly fellow-worm 

The poor petition spurn. 
Unmindful, tho' a weeping wife 

And helpless offspring mourn. 

If I 'm designed yon lordling's slave, 

By nature's law design'd, 
Why was an independent wish 

E'er planted in my mind? 
If not, why am I subject to 

His cruelty, or scorn? 
Or why has man the will and pow'r 

To make his fellow mourn ? 

Yet, let not this too much, my son, 

Disturb thy youthful breast ; 
This partial view of human-kind 

Is surely not the last ! 
The poor, oppressed, honest man, 

Had never, sure, been born, 
Had there not been some recompense 

To comfort those that mourn ! 

O Death ! the poor man's dearest friend. 

The kindest and the best ! 
Welcome the hour my ag^d limbs 

Are laid with thee at rest ! 



86 LITERATURE. 



The great, the wealthy, fear thy blow, 
From pomp and pleasures torn ; 

But, Oh ! a blest relief to those 
That weary-laden mourn ! 



THE BANKS O DOON. 

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon, 

How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair ! 
How can ye chant, ye little birds, 

And I sae weary, fu' o^ care ! 
Thou '11 break my heart, thou warbling bird, 

That wantons thro' the flowering thorn : 
Thou minds me o' departed joys, 

Departed — never to return. 

Aft hae I rovM by bonnie Doon, 

To see the rose and woodbine twine; 
And ilka bird sang o' its luve, 

And fondly sae did I o' mine. 
Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose, 

Fif sweet upon its thorny tree ; 
And my fause luver stole my rose, 

But ah ! he left the thorn wi' me. 



TAM O SHANTER. 



When chapman billies ^ leave the street, 
And drouthy - neebors, neebors meet. 
As market-days are wearing late. 
An' folk begin to tak the gate ; ^ 
While we sit bousing at the nappy,* 
An' getting fou and unco happy, 

1 Pedlar fellows. ^ Thirsty. 3 Road. * Ale. 



READINGS FROM BURNS. 89 

We think na on the lang Scots miles, 
The mosses, waters, slaps, ^ and styles, 
That lie between us and our hame, 
Whare sits our sulky sullen dame. 
Gathering her brows like gathering storm, 
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm. 

This truth fand honest Tarn o' Shanter, 
As he frae Ayr ae night did canter, 
(Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses. 
For honest men and bonnie lasses.) 

O Tam ! hadst thou but been sae wise. 
As ta'en thy ain wife Kate's advice ! 
She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum,^ 
A blethering,^ blustering, drunken blellum ; * 
That frae November till October, 
Ae market-day thou was na sober ; 
That ilka melder,^ wi' the miller, 
Thou sat as lang as thou had siller ; ® 
That ev'ry naig '' was ca'd a shoe on,* 
The smith and thee gat roaring fou "^ on ; 
That at the Lord's house, ev'n on Sunday, 
Thou drank wi' Kirton Jean till Monday. 
She prophesy'd that, late or soon. 
Thou would be found deep drown'd in Doon ; 
Or catch'd wi' warlocks in the mirk,^° 
By Alloway's auld haunted kirk. 

Ah, gentle dames ! it gars me greet, ^^ 
To think how mony counsels sweet, 
How mony lengthen'd, sage advices, 
The husband frae the wife despises ! 

But to our tale : Ae ^- market night, 
Tam had got planted, unco right, ^^ 
Fast by an ingle, ^* bleezing finely, 
Wi' reaming swats, ^^ that drank divinely ; 

1 Openings in hedges. ^ Good-for-nothing fellow. 3 Nonsensical. * Noisy fel- 
low, 5 Every milling. " Money. ^ Nag. ^ Was driven to have a shoe on. 
8 Drunk. ^o Dark. " Makes me weep, 12 One. ^^ Exceedingly comfortable. 
" Fireplace. is Foaming ale. 



90 



LITERA TURE, 

And at his elbow, Souter ^ Johnny, 
His ancient, trusty, drouthy ' crony ; 
Tarn lo'ed him like a vera brither ; 
They had been fou ^ for weeks thegither. 
The night drave on \vi' sangs and clatter ; * 
And ay the ale was growing better : 
The landlady and Tarn grew gracious, 
Wi' favours, secret, sweet, and precious : 
The souter tauld his queerest stories ; 
The landlord's laugh was ready chorus : 
The storm without might rair ° and rustle, 
Tarn did na mind the storm a whistle. 

Care, mad to see a man sae happy. 
E'en drown'd himsel amang the nappy : "" 
As bees flee hame wi' lades. ' o' treasure, 
The minutes wing'd their way wi' pleasure ; 
Kings may be blest, but Tarn was glorious. 
O'er a' the ills o' life victorious ! 

But pleasures are like poppies spread, 

You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed ; 

Or like the snow-falls in the river, 

A moment white — then melts for ever ; 

Or like the borealis race. 

That flit ere you can point their place ; 

Or like the rainbow's lovely form 

Evanishing amid the storm. — 

Nae man can tether time or tide ; — 

The hour approaches Tam maun ride ; 

That hour, o' night's black arch the key-stane, 

That dreary hour he mounts his beast in ; 

And sic * a night he taks the road in, 

As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in. 



The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last ; 
The rattling show'rs rose on the blast : 

1 Shoemaker. "- Thirsty. s Tipsy. * Chat. ^ Roar. « Ale. '' Loads. 

8 Such. 



READINGS FROM BURNS. 9 1 

The speedy gleams the darkness swallowed ; 
Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellowM : 
That night, a child might understand. 
The Deil had business on his hand. 

Weel mounted on his grey mare, Meg, 

A better never lifted leg. 

Tarn skelpit ^ on thro' dub and mire, 

Despising wind, and rain, and fire ; 

Whiles "' holding fast his gude blue bonnet ; 

Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet ; 

Whiles glowVing round wi' prudent cares. 

Lest bogles ^ catch him unawares ; 

Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, 

Whare ghaists and houlets * nightly cry. — 

By this time he was cross the ford, 
Whare in the snaw, the chapman smoor'd ; ^ 
And past the birks ^ and meikle '^ stane, 
Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane; 
And thro' the whins, and by the cairn, 
Whare hunters fand the murder'd bairn ; 
And near the thorn, aboon ^ the well, 
Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel. — 
Before him Doon pours all his floods ; 
The doubling storm roars thro' the woods ; 
The lightnings flash from pole to pole ; 
Near and more near the thunders roll : 
When, glimmering thro' the groaning trees, 
Kirk-Alloway seem'd in a bleeze ; ^ 
Thro' ilka bore ^^ the beams were glancing; 
And loud resounded mirth and dancing. — 

Inspiring bold John Barleycorn ! 

What dangers thou canst make us scorn ! 

Wi' tippenny,^^ we fear nae evil ; 

Wi' usquebae,^^ we '11 face the devil !- 

1 Rode quickly. 2 Sometimes. 3 Goblins. * Owls. 5 Pedlar was smothered. 
* Birches. ^ Large. « Above. ^ Blaze. 10 Every crevice. ^^ Twopenny ale. 
12 Whisky. 



92 



LITERA TURK, 

The swats ^ sae ream'd "^ in Tammie's noddle, 
Fair play, he car'd na deils a boddle.^ 
But Maggie stood right sair astonished. 
Till, by the heel and hand admonished. 
She ventur'd forward on the light ; 
And, wow ! Tarn saw an unco * sight ! 

Warlocks and witches in a dance ; 
Nae cotillion brent new ^ frae France, 
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, 
Put life and mettle in their heels. 
A winnock-bunker '^ in the east, 
There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast ; 
A towzie tyke,'' black, grim, and large. 
To gie them music was his charge : 
He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl,* 
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl." — 
Coffins'stood round like open presses. 
That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses ; 
And by some devilish cantraip slight,'" 
Each in its cauld hand held a light, — 
By which heroic Tam was able 
To note upon the haly " table, 
A murderer's banes in gibbet aims ; '' 
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns ; 
A thief, new-cutted frae the rape, 
Wi' his last gasp his gab ^^ did gape ; 
Five tomahawks, wi' blude red rusted; 
Five scymitars, wi' murder crusted ; 
A garter, which a babe had strangled ; 
A knife, a father's throat had mangled. 
Whom his ain '* son o' life bereft. 
The grey hairs yet stack to the heft ; 
Wi' mair o' horrible and awfu'. 
Which ev'n to name wad be unlawfu'. 

As Tammie glowr'd,'^ amaz'd, and curious. 
The mirth and fun grew fast and furious : 

1 Ale. 2 Frothed or mounted. 3 Farthing. < Strange. ^ Brand-new. 

6 Window recess. '' Shaggy dog. 8 Made them sreech. 9 Thrill, vibrate. 

10 Magical trick. " Holy. ^^ Irons. ^^ Mouth. " Own. i^ Stared. 



READINGS FROM BURNS. 93 

The piper loud and louder blew ; 

The dancers quick and quicker flew ; 

They reePd, they set, they crossed, they cleekit,* 

Till ilka cariin swat and reekit,^ 

And coost her daddies ^ to the wark, 

And linket * at it in her sark ! ^ 

Now Tarn, O Tarn ! had thae been queans, 
A' plump and strapping in their teens ; 
Their sarks, instead o' creeshie flannen," 
Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linnen ! ' 
Thir breeks * o' mine, my only pair, 
That ance were plush, o' gude blue hair, 
I wad hae gi'en them off my hurdles,^ 
For ae blink ^^ o' the bonnie burdies ! ^* 

But withered beldams, auld and droll, 
Rigwooddie ^' hags wad spean ^^ a foal, 
Lowping ^* and flinging on a crummock,^^ 
I wonder didna turn thy stomach. 

But Tam kend what was what fu' brawlie,*® 

There was ae winsome wench and waulie,*' 

That night enlisted in the core, 

(Lang after kenn'd on Carrick shore ; 

For mony a beast to dead she shot. 

And perish'd mony a bonnie boat. 

And shook baith meikle corn and bear,*^ 

And kept the country-side in fear,) 

Her cutty sark,^^ o' Paisley harn,^" 

That while a lassie she had worn. 

In longitude tho' sorely scanty, 

It was her best, and she was vauntie.'* — 

Ah ! little kenn'd thy reverend grannie. 

That sark she coft ^^ for her wee Nannie, 

1 Linked arms. ^ Every hag sweated and smoked. ^ Cast off her clothes. 

* Tripped smartly. ^ Chemise. 6 Greasy flannel. "> Very fine (No. 1700) linen. 
8 These breeches. » Thighs, legs. ^o One look. 11 Lasses. 12 Gaunt and 

withered. i3 xhat would wean. " Leaping. ^^ Crook-headed staff. ^^ Very 
well. 17 Xall and good-looking. i* Much wheat and barley. ^^ Short shirt. 

20 Coarse linen. 21 Boastful, proud. -- Bought. 



Q4 LITERA TURE. 

Wi' tvva pund Scots ('t was a' her riches), 
Wad ever grac'd a dance of witches! 

But here my muse her wing maun cour ; ^ 
Sic flights are far beyond her powV ; 
To sing how Nannie lap and flang,- 
(A souple jade she was, and Strang,) 
And how Tarn stood, like ane bewitched, 
And thought his very een ' enrich'd ; 
Even Satan glowr'd, and fidg'd * fu' fain. 
And hotch'd ^ and blew wi' might and main : 
Till first ae caper, syne " anither. 
Tarn tint ^ his reason a' thegither. 
And roars out, " Weel done, Cutty-sark!" 
And in an instant all was dark : 
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied, 
When out the hellish legion sallied. 

As bees bizz out wi' angry fyke,** 

When plundering herds assail their byke ; ^ 

As open pussie\s *" mortal foes, 

When, pop ! she starts before their nose ; 

As eager runs the market-crowd. 

When, " Catch the thief!" resounds aloud; 

So Maggie runs, the witches follow, 

Wi' monie an eldritch skreech " and hollow. 

Ah, Tarn ! ah. Tarn ! thou 11 get thy fairin'! 
In hell they '11 roast thee like a herrin' ! 
In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin' ! 
Kate soon will be a woefu' woman ! 
Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg, 
And win the key-stane of the brig : " 
There at them thou thy tail may toss, 
A running stream they darena cross. 
But ere the key-stane she could make. 
The fient '' a tail she had to shake ! 

1 Must lower. 2 Leaped and flung. ^ Eyes. * Fidgeted. ^ Hitched. 

CThen. 'Lost. « Fuss. » Nest. i" The hare's. i' Unearthly screech. 

J2 Bridge. 13 Devil. 



READINGS FROM BURNS. 

For Nannie, far before the rest, 
Hard upon noble Maggie prest, 
And flew at Tarn wi' furious ettle ; "*■ 
But little wist she Maggie's mettle — 
Ae spring brought off her master hale, 
But left behind her ain gray tail : 
The carlin claught - her by the rump, 
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump ! 

Now, wha this tale o' truth shall read, 
Ilk man and mother's son, tak heed : 
Whene'er to drink you are inclined. 
Or cutty-sarks run in your mind. 
Think, ye may buy the joys o'er dear. 
Remember Tarn o' Shanter's mare. 

* Intent. ^ Hag clutched. 



95 



STUDENTS' NOTES AND QUERIES. 



QUERIES. 



r. Who were the heroines of the songs in which the following 
verses or stanzas occur? 

(di) " A bonny lass, I will confess, 
Is pleasant to the ee, 
But without some better qualities 
She 's no a lass for me.'' 

{b) " Her face is fair, her heart is true, 
As spotless as she 's bonny, O ; 
The opening gowan, wet wi' dew, 
Nae purer is than Nannie, O." 

(<:) •' Ye geek at me because I 'm poor. 
But feint a hair care 1." 

{d) " And she 's twa sparkling, roguish e'en." 

(e) " Yestreen, when to the trembling string. 

The dance gaed through the lighted ha', 
To thee my fancy took its wing — 
I sat, but neither heard nor saw." 

(J") " I kent her heart was a' my ain ; 
I loved her most sincerely : 
I kissed her owre and owre again, 
Amang the rigs o' barley." 

ig) " Gie me a canny hour at e'en. 

My arms about my dearie, O, 
And warl'ly cares, and warl'ly men, 
May a' gae tapsalteerie, O." 
96 



BURNS— NOTES AND QUERIES. 97 

{h) " Though mountains rise, and deserts howl, 
And oceans roar between, 
Yet dearer than my deathless sowl, 
I still would love my Jean." 

(/) " Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, 
Flow gently, I '11 sing thee a song in thy praise ; 
My Mary \s asleep by thy murmuring stream — 
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream." 

(/*) *' Farewell the glen sae bushy, O ! 
Farewell the plain sae rushy, O I 
To other lands I now must go, 
To sing my Highland Lassie, O." 

{K) "Powers celestial! whose protection 
Ever guards the virtuous fair, 
While in distant climes I wander, 
Let my Mary be your care." 

(J) *' How pleasant the banks of the clear-winding Devon, 

With green-spreading bushes, and flowers blooming fair I 
But the bonniest flower on the banks of the Devon 
Was once a sweet bud on the braes of the Ayr." 

{m) " There 's not a bonny flower that springs 
By fountain, shaw, or green. 
There 's not a bonny bird that sings, 
But minds me o' my Jean." 

(«) •' That sacred hour can I forget? 

Can I forget the hallow'd grove, 
Where, by the winding Ayr, we met 
To live one day of parting love .'' " 

{p) "I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen, 

A gate, I fear, I '11 dearly rue; 

I got my death frae twa sweet e'en, 

Twa lovely e'en o' bonny blue." 

(/) *' Bonnie wee thing, cannie wee thing. 
Lovely wee thing, wert thou mine, 
I wad wear thee in my bosom. 
Lest my jewel I should tine." 



g^ LITER A TURE. 

{q) " Ae fond kiss, and then we sever; 
Ae fareweel, and then, for ever ! " 

(r) " Still as I hail thee, thou gloomy December,' 
Still shall I hail thee wi' sorrow and care ; 
For sad was the parting thou makes me remember, 
Parting wi' Nancy, oh ! ne'er to meet mair." 

if) *' The snaw-drop and primrose our woodlands adorn. 
And violets bathe in the weet o' the morn ; 
They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blaw, 
They mmd me o' Nannie — and Nannie 's awa'.' 



.1 " 



(t) " Oh, saw ye bonnie Lesley, 

As she gaed o'er the Border? 
She's gane, like Alexander, 

To spread her conquests farther. 

*' To see her is to love her. 
And love but her for ever ; 
For nature made her what she is, 
And never made another." 

^u) •* Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon, 

How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair; 
How can ye chant, ye little birds. 
And I sae weary, fu' o' care ? " 

[v^ *' Ve banks and braes and streams around 
The castle o' Montgomery, 
Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, 
Your waters never drumlie." 

(w) " Oh fresh is the rose in the gay, dewy morning, 
And sweet is the lily at evening close ; 
But in the fair presence o' lovely young Jessie, 
Unseen is the lily, unheeded the rose." 

(.i) " Now what could artless Jeanie do? 
She had nae will to say him na : 
At length she blushed a sweet content. 
And love was aye between them twa." 



BURNS— NOTES AND QUERIES. 99 

(j) " Such was my Chloris' bonny face, 

When first her bonny face I saw ; 

And aye my Chloris' dearest charm, 

She says she lo'es me best of a'." 

{z) " Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast, 
On yonder lea, on yonder lea, 
My plaidie to the angry airt, 

I M shelter thee, I M shelter thee." 



2. In what well-known poems may the following verses or stanzas 
be found? 

{a) '' Some books are lies frae end to end. 

And some great lies were never penned : 
E'en ministers, they hae been kenn'd, 

In holy rapture, 
A rousing whid at times to vend, 

And nail 't wi' Scripture." 

{b) "Wee, sleekit, cowrin', timorous beastie, 
Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie ! 
Thou needna start awa' sae hasty, 

Wi' bickering brattle ! 
I wad be laith to rin and chase thee, 
Wi' murdering pattle." 

{c) " But, fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben! 
Oh, wad ye tak a thought and men' ! 
Ye aiblins might — I dinna ken — 

Still hae a stake — 
I 'm wae to think upo' yon den, 

Even for your sake." 

{d) *' Life is all a variorum. 

We regard not how it goes ; 
Let them cant about decorum 
Who have characters to lose." 

{e) " Had I to guid advice but harkit, 

I might, by this, hae led a market, 



lOO LITERATURE. 

And strutted in a bank, and clerkit 

My cash-account ; 
While here, half-mad, half- fed, half-sarkit. 

Is a' th' amount." 

(/) ♦♦ But human bodies are sic fools, 
For a' their colleges and schools, 
That when nae real ills perplex them 
They mak enow themselves to vex them." 

{g) " Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us 
To see oursels as ithers see us ! 
It wad frae mony a blunder free us, 

And foolish notion ; 
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us. 

And e'en devotion ! " 

(//) " Then gently scan your brother man. 

Still gentler sister woman ; 
Though they may gang a kennin' wrang, 

To step aside is human : 
One point must still be greatly dark, 

The moving why they do it : 
And just as lamely can ye mark 

How far, perhaps, they rue it." 

{{) •' Who made the heart, 't is He alone 

Decidedly can try us ; 
He knows each chord — its various tone. 

Each spring — its various bias : 
Then at the balance let 's be mute, 

We never can adjust it ; 
What 's done we partly may compute, 

But know not what's resisted." 

(y) •' Such is the fate of artless maid, 

Sweet floweret of the rural shade ! 
By love's simplicity betray'd. 

And guileless trust. 
Till she, like thee, all soil'd, is laid 

Low i' the dust." 



BURNS— NOTES AND QUERIES. IQI 

{k) "Oppress'd with grief, oppress^ with care, 
A burden more than I can bear, 

I sit me down and sigh : 
O life ! thou art a galling load, 
Along a rough, a weary road. 

To wretches such as I.'' 

(/) '* Guid grant that thou may aye inherit 
Thy mither's person, grace, and merit. 
And thy poor worthless daddy's spirit, 

Without his failin's : 
'TwiK please me mair to see't and hear't 

Than stockit mailins." 

(?//) •♦ When fevers burn, or ague freezes. 
Rheumatics gnaw, or colic squeezes. 
Our neighbor's sympathy may ease us, 

Wi' pitying moan ; 
But thee — thou hell o' a' diseases. 
Aye mocks our groan !"" 

(«) ''It's no in titles nor in rank ; 

It 's no in wealth like Lon'on bank, — 

To purchase peace and rest : 
It's no in making muckle mair; 
It 's no in books ; it 's no in lear, — 

To make us truly blest." 

(<?) •' Gie me a spark o' Nature's fire ! 
That 's a' the learning I desire : 
Then, though I drudge through dub an' mire 

At pleugh or cart. 
My muse, though hamely in attire, 

May touch the heart." 

(^) '* To make a happy fire-side clime 

To weans and wife, — 
That 's the true pathos and sublime 
Of human life." 



1 02 LIT ERA T URE. 



Answers. 



1. {a) Nelly Kirkpatrick ; {b) Agnes Fleming; {c) Isabella 
Steven; (</) Ellison Begbie ; (^) Mary Morison ; (/) Annie Ron- 
ald ; {g) uncertain; {Ji) Jean Armour (afterwards his wife); 
(?) uncertain, but supposed to be " Highland Mary " ; (y) "High- 
land Mary " ; {k^ the same ; (/) Miss Charlotte Hamilton ; (;//) 
his wife; («) "Highland Mary"; i^o) Miss Jean Jeffrey; (/) 
Miss Deborah Davies ("lovely Davies ") ; {q) Mrs. McLehose 
(" Clarinda'') — ■ Mrs. Jameson speaking of this song says : " It is 
itself a complete romance, and contains the essence of an existence 
of pain and pleasure distilled into one burning drop"; (r) Mrs. 
McLehose; (j") the same ; (/) Miss Lesley Baillie ; (/^ the daugh- 
ter of a gentleman of Carrick, name not now known ; {v) " High- 
land Mary " ; {w) Miss Jessie Staig ; (;f) Miss Jean M\Murdo ; 
(/) JeanLorimer; (2) Jessie Lewars. 

2. {a) "Death and Dr. Hornbook"; {b) "To a Mouse"; 
(<;) "Address to the DeiP'; {d) " The Jolly Beggars " ; (e) "The 
Vision"; (/") " The Twa Dogs " ; {g) " To a Louse " ; (//) "Ad- 
dress to the Unco Guid " ; (/) the same; (y) "To a Mountain 
Daisy"; {k) " Despondency,— An Ode"; (/) "To his Illegiti- 
mate Child"; (w) "Address to the Toothache": («) " Epistle to 
Davie"; (t?) "Epistle to John Lapraik " ; {p) "Epistle to Dr. 
Blacklock." 



STUDY OUTLINE FOR CLUBS AND CIRCLES. 



The aim of the present book is to give the reader 
such facilities for the study of Burns as will make other 
helps unnecessary. To assist readers, however, both 
those who may be content with what is here given and 
those who may wish to make a further study of Burns, 
the following outline is drawn up. It will be especially 
useful to members of clubs and circles who may wish to 
confine their study of Burns to one or two evenings, and 
who yet desire in that time to get as much out of their 
study as possible. It will be useful also to those who 
wish to know something about the literature on Burns 
most available to the ordinary reader. 

1. Read the " Biographical Study" as herein given. 

2. Find in Burns' poems the particular poems from which the ex- 
tracts in the biographical study have been taken. 

3. Read " The Cotter's Saturday Night." 

4. Find and read the poems written in honor of (i) Jean Armour 
(Mrs. Burns), (2) Highland Mary, (3) Mary Morison, (4) Charlotte 
Hamilton, (5) " Clarinda," (6) Jean McMurdo, (7) Jean Lorimer, 
(8) Jessie Staig, (9) Jessie Lewars. 

5. Read " A Mountain Daisy," " To a Mouse," " The Wounded 
Hare," "John Anderson, My Jo," "Address of Bruce at Bannock- 
burn," "Should auld acquaintance be forgot," "Sweet Afton," 
" The Banks of Doon," " The Twa Dogs," " The Brigs of Ayr," 
" To a Haggis," " For a' that and a' that," " Hallowe'en," " The 
Jolly Beggars," " Tam o' Shanter," "Holy Willie's Prayer." 

103 



I04 BURNS— STUDY OUTLINE, 

(Note. Not all the poems and songs here mentioned are suitable 
for reading in public.) 

6. Members of clubs and circles, as well as private students, will 
also find considerable interest in hunting up and reading the poems 
referred to in our " Students' Notes and Queries." Some of these, it 
may be remarked, are the same as some of those in the lists above, 
but many are different. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 




Sir Walter Scott. 

From the Painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY, 

By John Ebenezer Bryant. 

Scott is incomparably the world's greatest novelist 
of the romantic school. Nay, more ; he is one of the 
world's very greatest masters of imagination in the liter- 
ary art. Only a few others — as, for example, Dickens 
— can be ranked equal with him. Only a very few — 
as, for example, Shakespeare — can be placed in any 
respect above him. He has his limitations, even as 
Dickens had, even also as Shakespeare had ; but, not- 
withstanding all these, the verdict of the reading public 
of to-day, as was that of the reading public of his own 
time, is that as a creator of fictional character, and espe- 
cially as a re- creator of the historic past, Scott's genius 
was second only to that of Shakespeare, if, indeed, in 
these respects it was not equal to Shakespeare's. 

There exists just now a school of critics — an exigu- 
ous and unfollowed school, however — who affect to find 
Scott's imaginative work insufficiently realistic, and who 
would therefore rank him as an artist inferior to those 
ingenious but scarcely highly gifted literary craftsmen 
whose fine-spun attenuation of frugal incident and plot, 
and photographic reproduction of merely contemporary 

109 



IIO LITERATURE. 

life and character, are the dominant features of the im- 
aginative hterature of this last decade of our century. 

But because of such an opinion as this, let no ingenu- 
ous youth who has formed a taste for reading Scott's 
romances fear to confess his fondness for them, or fail, 
if such be his bent, to take generous and enthusiastic 
pride in his delight in them. The greatest scholars and 
thinkers of every generation since these romances first 
began to appear, the greatest masters in every fine and 
in every industrial art, have taken the same delight in 
them, and have felt the same exaltation because of their 
delight in them. For to know Scott is precisely the 
same kind of knowledge as to know Shakespeare ; and 
to be fond of Scott, to take delight in reading and re- 
membering Scott, gives rise to the same glow and exal- 
tation of feeling that one experiences who is fond of 
Shakespeare, and who takes delight in reading and 
remembering Shakespeare. 

Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, Aug. 15, i//!- 

His father was an attorney — a strictly upright, proud, 

precise, and formal man, conscientiously methodical and 

industrious, from whom, no doubt, Scott derived much 

of his sense of honor, his pride, his conservatism, and his 

dogged, determined, persevering habits of work. His 

mother was a w^ell-educated woman, of great power of 

memory and great faculty for narration ; and undoubtedly 

it is to her that the future novelist's own marvellous 

power of memory and faculty for narration must be 

ascribed. But Scott's wonderfully composite character 

and vast intellectual endowment were derived quite as 

much from other ancestors as from these immediate ones. 

He came from a race of border gentry, many of them, 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



Ill 



in earlier times, border raiders, moss-troopers, and free 
lances, and from them, no doubt, inherited that courage, 
self-confidence, and bold readiness to try throws with 
fortune at any time, which in prosperous days led him 
into enterprises which his prudence should have for- 
bidden, and which in days when calamities came pouring 
thick upon him, gave him not merely fortitude to endure 
them, but resolute determination heroically to set his 
face to conquer them. 

As a child Scott was precocious far beyond the ordi- 
nary, and early gave promise of being a remarkable per- 




Walter Scott in 1777. 



sonage. Even at six years of age he described himself 
as ''a virtuoso"; as "one who wishes and will know 
everything." In physique he was delicate and weakly, 
and for that reason was sent to live much with his 
grandfather's people in the country. In the outdoor 
life thus obtained for him, he grew to have a strong and 



J J 2 LITERA TURE. 

vigorous constitution ; but a lameness which, when very 
young, he had acquired through fever, remained with 
him all his life. In time he attended for a short while 
the high school at Edinburgh ; and afterward he was 
sent to a school at Kelso. But as a student at school he 
won no great reputation. He learned Latin, but de- 
clined to learn Greek. For that which interested him 
he had a surpassing facility of acquisition, but he cared 
little for the merely technical parts of education. His 
memory was astonishingly retentive and accurate ; while 
it rejected unconsciously that which was not akin to his 
sympathies and tastes, it seemed to retain everything 
else. He was a great favorite with his companions 
and fellow-students because of his gifts as a stor)- teller. 
Even as a child he had held audiences of his elders spell- 
bound while he narrated or declaimed tales of border 
exploit and daring. His mind soon became a vast 
storehouse of striking incident and picturesque detail. 
The past — the past of his sympathies and affections — 
the past of chivalry and romance — was to him as the 
present. To feed this passion he spared himself no 
labor or inconvenience. He read everything he could 
find that would serve to illuminate, even ever so little, 
the field of his research. But his great resource was 
the traditionary lore of the living inhabitants of those 
districts whose history had been eventful. To get pos- 
session of this, he travelled about unwearyingly, on foot, 
in all the Scottish lowlands and border country, visiting 
every scene which he knew to be associated with inter- 
esting legend or historic incident, and talking with the 
people to whom these legends and incidents were mat- 
ters of common belief and knowledge. He was a wel- 



SIR JV ALTER SCOTT. 



113 



come intruder wherever he went ; for he had a special 
faculty for winning the favor and good- will of strangers, 
especially of the common people, whose store of tradi- 
tionary lore is always greatest, and who therefore, per- 
haps unconsciously, felt a fellow-feeling with him in his 
pursuit. 

These '' raids into Liddesdale," as he called them, 
and excursions into other districts, coiistituted a favorite 
relaxation with Scott, not only all through his school 
and college days, but afterward while he was a student- 
at-law and while he practised at the bar. His father 
was much provoked at this apparent lack of practicality 
in his son's conduct, and reproached him with wasting 
his time at '^ peddling," instead of taking seriously to 
his profession. Once when Scott lamented in his 
father's hearing his inability to play the flute, and so 
more easily win his way among the people in his tramps 
by pleasing them with his flute-playing, as Goldsmith is 
said to have done in his tour of Europe, his father indig- 
nantly predicted as to his future : <* I greatly doubt, 
sir, you were born for nae better than a gangrel scrape- 
gut." Scott's musical ability, however, was exceedingly 
deficient, and he could not hope to reduce expenses by 
its aid ; but with his inexhaustible fund of droll and 
humorous anecdote and romantic tale and legend, and 
with his marvellous gift as a narrator, he was a boon 
companion everywhere ; and whether among the rude 
but hearty dalesmen of the lowland hill country, or the 
most fastidious coteries of the Edinburgh bar, he was 
equally at home and equally the choicest of good spirits. 

Scott's pursuit of antiquarian information and roman- 
tic incident and legend early became the main business 



^u 



LITER A TURE. 



of his life. After his call to the bar (in 1792) he for 
some time applied himself steadily to the practice of his 
profession ; but he did so as a means to an end. His 
object seems to have been the securing of some quasi- 
legal official position in which he could be sure of an 
income and yet have leisure enough for his private avo- 
cation. In this he was successful. In 1799 he obtained 
the office of sheriff of Selkirkshire, with a salary of ;£300 
a year and not very onerous duties. In 1806 he under- 
took the work of clerk of the Court of Session. The 
duties of this position were considerable, especially for 
six months of the year, when the court was sitting. lUit 
they still left him a fair share of time for his private 
pursuits. For six years he discharged the duties of the 
office without remuneration; but in 18 12 he was able to 
enter upon its emoluments, and these afforded him a 
further income of ^1,300 a year. His joint income 
from his two offices was thus ^1,600 a year; and this, 
added to what he gained from his literary work (it is 
estimated that during his lifetime he earned not less 
than ;£ 1 40,000 by his pen), made his total income from 
18 1 2 forward (he was then but forty-one years old) not 
merely sufficient but ample, even for the scale of living 
he had adopted, which, it must be said, as prosperity 
increased with him, became more and more expensive, 
until at last, through munificence rather than prodigal- 
ity, it certainly was excessive. But the unfortunate 
commercial speculations into which, beginning in 1805, 
he had entered, resulted, in 1826, when he was fifty- five 
years of age and youthful freshness and energy were but 
a memory with him, in his being a ruined man, pros- 
trated with a debt of over ;£ 150,000. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



1^5 



Scott's speculative ventures are a sadly distressing 
feature in an otherwise magnificently successful career. 
The sanguineness of disposition and simplicity of con- 
duct he manifested in them are in strange contrast with 
the strong common sense with which he endows many 




Lady Scott. 



of his fictitious characters. They gave to his life, how- 
ever, an elemejit of pathos which otherwise it had lacked ; 
and when the culminating blow came, and he set all the 
resources of his intellect and his unconquerable will to 
undo the effects of it, the pathos became sublime ; and 
the last years of the great novelist's life, when, amid 



Il6 LITERATURE. 

bodily distresses, domestic bereavement, and consciously 
fast-failing mental powers, he worked night and day 
with unceasing energy to pay off the claims against him 
and redeem his commercial honor, were, in moral gran- 
deur, the noblest of them all. 

There is also an element of pathos in Scott's domestic 
life. He early gave his heart to a young lady of beauty 
and social position, who, for a time at least, seemed 
to requite his affection by bestowing hers upon him in 
return. For six years he indulged the hope of maiTying 
her ; but in the end she accepted another suitor, and, as 
it would seem, somewhat suddenly so. Scott never for- 
got, nor quite forgave, the wound thus inflicted upon 
his deepest, his most passionate feelings ; for his was a 
strong nature. His pride, however, carried him over 
the crisis; and within a year he married (in 1798) a 
Mile. Charpentier, the daughter of a French gentle- 
woman, a royalist, then finding an asylum in Britain. 
This young lady was also a beauty and of good social 
position, and she had besides an income of her own. 
But though she loved her husband, and made him a 
good wife, she was no mate for him, either in depth of 
character or in intellectual sympathies ; and, on Scott's 
part at least, there could not help but be a sense of some- 
thing amiss in the union, although it is not known that 
he ever so expressed it. 

Scott's first serious venture into literature was his 
collection of old Scottish ballads, with notes, introduc- 
tion, illustrations, etc., and some new ballads of his 
own, entitled "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border." 
This publication (issued in 1802, when he was thirty- 
one years of age) was exceedingly successful, and at 



SIR IV ALTER SCOTT. 



117 



once gained for him a high Hterary name. Some of his 
own contributions to the ballads of the volumes were 
among the very finest poems he ever wrote. In 1805 
appeared his first great poem, '* The Lay of the Last 
Minstrel." This composition, a romance in verse, was 
the first realization of Scott's special genius, the power 
of portraying romantic incident and character ; and 
though '' The Lay " was a somewhat less perfect mani- 
festation of this genius than some of his later poems, 
as these again were less perfect manifestations of it 
than were afterward his brilliant prose romances, it was, 
nevertheless, a great and notable production, and imme- 
diately placed its author in the very front rank of Brit- 
ish poets. "The Lay," too, had the merit not only of 
excellence but of novelty. It constituted a distinct ac- 
cession to the realm of literature. It was indeed an 
excursion into a field of poetic composition hitherto 
utterly untrod. In 1808 appeared *' Marmion," Scott's 
greatest poem, and one of the worM's great literary 
masterpieces. In 18 10 " Marmion " was followed by 
" The Lady of the Lake," Scott's most popular poem ; 
a composition, however, in which the poetic treatment 
of the theme is less striking than the development of 
its narrative interest. In 18 13 followed ^' Rokeby," and 
in 18 1 5 "The Lord of the Isles," poems in which, in a 
still more marked degree than in " The Lady of the 
Lake," the interest depends less upon poetic power and 
feeling than upon mere dramatic narration. 

But Scott had by this time discovered that vein in 
his genius from which its richest treasures were to be 
extracted. In 1805 he had begun a prose romance en- 
titled "Waverley," which, however, he had laid aside 



I I 8 LITER A TURE. 

unfinished and forgotten. In the summer of 1 8 14 he 
chanced upon the unfinished manuscript again, and at 
once he set at work to complete it. This he did with 
almost incredible speed, for he wrote at least two-thirds 
of the story in less than three weeks. '' Waverley " was 
published anonymously, but it took the world by storm. 
It was followed early in 18 15 by " Guy Mannering," 
and in 18 16 by '' The Antiquary " and '' Old Mortality," 
the first and second being among his very best works, 
and the third perhaps the very best of all. In 1 8 1 7, 
although suffering from an exceedingly painful illness of 
the stomach, he turned out '^ Rob Roy " and *' The 
Heart of Midlothian," each an immortal production. 
And so the stream flowed on. Much of his best work 
was dictated to amanuenses amid fits of suffering so 
acute that his assistants would urge him to desist ; but 
the unconquerable will never faltered, even for an in- 
stant. "The Bride of Lammermoor," "The Legend 
of Montrose," and " Ivanhoe," the first the most pa- 
thetic, the last perhaps the most popular of the novels, 
were all produced in this way. Then followed " The 
Monastery" and "The Abbot," the former thought by 
some a failure, the latter, which is a supplement to it, 
adjudged by every one to be a triumphantly redeeming 
success. Then, within three years, were produced 
" Kenilworth," his great historical romance, "The Pi- 
rate," "The Fortunes of Nigel," — noted for its dra- 
matic characterization of King James I, — " Peveril of 
the Peak," " Quentin Durward," "St. Ronan's Well," 
and " Redgauntlet," the two latter thought by many 
critics to be among the poorest of the series. " St. 
Ronan's Well," however, though severely criticised and 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



119 



much condemned, has its defenders, and with many 
readers of the VVaverley novels it ranks as the very best. 

A curious circumstance connected with the pubhca- 
tion of the Waverley novels (as these romances are 
always termed) was their anonymity ; for Scott chose 
to continue throughout the plan of concealing his name 
which he had adopted at the beginning. The author of 
the novels was familiarly spoken of ac '' The Great Un- 
known " ; and who he was remained for some years a 
secret known only to a few. Even after his identity 
with the author of '' Waverley " was an open secret, 
Scott himself and all of Scott's friends took the greatest 
pains to maintain the fiction that the two were not the 
same ; and sometimes their actions led to what seemed 
to be the most authoritative denial of the truth. He 
himself reviewed the novels m the Quarterly Reviezv. 
Nor did he openly acknowledge his responsibility for 
any of the first twenty-three novels which he wrote 
until about the end of his career. 

What intensified the mystery as to the authorship of 
these novels was the fact that, though many unmistak- 
able signs pointed to Scott as their author, his well- 
known most laborious industry and marvellous produc- 
tivity in other branches of literature seemed utterly to 
preclude the possibility of it. To mention only the 
names of his many literary productions outside of 
poetry and romance would be tedious ; but as a single 
instance of his laborious activity his ^' Dryden " may be 
cited. This was a new edition of Dryden 's works in 
eighteen volumes, accompanied by a " Life," — a piece 
of work that is considered by competent judges to be 
quite sufficient to have employed the entire energies of 



I 2 O LIT ERA TURE. 

one man for at least eight years ! And yet his " Dry- 
den " was only a fraction of his other work during the 
years he was turning out the Waverleys. 

Scott was undoubtedly the most brilliantly successful 
literary worker the world has ever known. Some may 
perhaps have equalled him in money earnings, though 
this is scarcely probable. Some may perhaps have won 
a higher social recognition. But, taken all in all, Scott's 
success is unparalleled. His money earnings in his own 
lifetime approximated three-quarters of a million of dol- 
lars. He was the most popular, the most highly es- 
teemed, the most sought-after author of his time. He 
had won undying fame in two great departments of lit- 
erature, — poetry and prose romance ; while as a his- 
torian, an antiquarian, a biographer, an editor, and a 
critic, his performances were ranked with the very best. 
He held two offices of high social rank and ample emolu- 
ments ; and his discharge of the duties involved in them 
was so faithfully methodical and painstaking that, far 
from diminishing the credit of his literary career, they 
very much enhanced it. He had bought a fine estate in 
his favorite Liddesdale, and had gratified his natural taste 
by planting it with forests, whose growth he watched 
with loving solicitude, until his domain resembled that of 
some mediaeval baron. He had built upon it a mansion, 
'^ Abbotsford," a ''romance in stone and mortar," which 
was a place of pilgrimage to the literati of all nations, 
and where he indulged in a hospitality that was almost 
boundless. He had been made a baronet at the hands 
of his king ; and the honor was bestowed upon him in 
such a manner as to be peculiarly significant of the 
esteem in which he was held, not only by the king, but 




Abbotsford, from the Southeast. 




The Entrance Hall, Abbotsford. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



123 



by that social class of which the king is the culminating 
representative. His character was known to be spotless ; 
his domestic life a happy one. His wife and children 
loved him ; his friends were devoted to him ; the people 
on his estate almost passionately adored him ; while the 
general public regarded him with a feeling that no other 
literary man has ever been the object of ; for with the 
honor that was bestowed upon him for the merit of his 
acknowledged literary work, and especially of the work 
which in spite of contrary appearances every one be- 
lieved to be his, because of the impossibility of its being 
any other's, there was mixed a strange half-unbelief in 
the possibility of this work being his at all ! So that, 
while he was universally regarded as being the first 
literary man of his time, there was a mystery about him 
which enhanced his reputation to a degree now almost 
inconceivable. 

A success so brilliant as Scott's seemed to be, had it 
had no relief from the sadder aspects of life, would have 
dazzled the eyes of the world to the real intrinsic gran- 
deur of his character, if, indeed, that character itself had 
not succumbed to the deteriorating influences of so 
much good fortune. But, as before intimated, Scott's 
life had aspects sad enough ; and much of his good for- 
tune came to a tragical and crushing end. In 1805 he 
had entered into a secret partnership in a printing busi- 
ness with James Ballantyne, an old Kelso schoolfellow. 
In 1809 he entered into a partnership, also a secret one, 
with John Ballantyne, a brother of James, in a publish- 
ing and bookselling business. Neither of these men 
was fit to be intrusted with the management of such a 
large enterprise as Scott contrived by his literary efforts 



I 24 LITER A TURE. 

and literary connections to put into their hands ; and of 
the two John Ballantyne, who had the more important 
end to look after, was by far the more incompetent. 
Scott's own judgment in such business matters as he 
passed opinion upon (which, however, were not many) 
seems to have been woefully deficient in prudence and 
common sense. The ventures of the two firms were 
huge and exceedingly unprofitable. Time and time 
again financial ruin was averted only by Scott coming to 
the rescue with money, or with books that sold well with 
the public. Finally the publishing house was wound 
up. But another house, that of Constable & Co., who 
now desired to be Scott's publishers, became heavily 
burdened by the acquisition of the large unsalable stocks 
of the late publishing firm ; and the printing house was 
likewise heavily burdened by assuming its financial obli- 
gations. Scott himself contributed to the causes of dis- 
aster by drawing upon his new publishers for immense 
sums of money in advance for works still to be written. 
Finally, in the year 1825, a year of financial crises all 
over the empire, the credit of the house of Constable & 
Co. became impaired. Early in January, 1826, it sus- 
pended payment. Its utter collapse immediately fol- 
lowed, as also that of the printing house of James Bal- 
lantyne & Co., to which the Constable firm was greatly 
indebted. Not only had Scott to retire all the bills that 
he had drawn upon Constable & Co. for unwritten 
works, but he had to assume the debts of the Ballan- 
tyne printing house, which alone amounted to £,\ 17,000. 
The total indebtedness thus suddenly thrown upon him 
amounted to no less than ^150,000. 

It would have been an easy matter for Scott to have 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 12 5 

compromised with his creditors, but his pride made such 
a recourse abhorrent to him. '< God granting me time 
and health," he said, '' I will pay every penny." Then 
began the grandest part of Scott's career, though an in- 
finitely sad part. He sat down to work off this enormous 
debt by his pen alone. Troubles came upon him with 
unrelenting haste. His wife, of whose delicate beauty 
and fragile frame he had ever been exceedingly tender, 
sickened and died. His own health broke. Rheumatism 
attacked him, and crippled his hands so that he could not 
hold a pen. He was prostrated by paralytic seizures. 
Worse than all, his brain gave way. He is said to have 
worked during much of this time with little more than 
half a brain. He became a victim to aphasia. Finally 
his imaginative faculties grew inert. As he himself de- 
scribed it, ''The magician's wand had broken." 

It is marvellous, however, what Scott accomplished in 
these five years of bodily and mental paralysis. In three 
months after the failure he had finished ''Woodstock," 
the last of his great novels, though not, of course, one 
of the very best. For this he received ;£8,228. In two 
years he had completed his great historical work, his 
" Life of Napoleon Bonaparte," for which he received 
£iS,ooo. By January, 1828, he had paid off ;£40,ooo 
of his debts. It is estimated that in less than six years 
more, had his health been spared to him, he would have 
discharged every debt he owed. It is marvellous, too, 
to realize that some of his very best work (though it was 
of minor character) was produced during this time of 
physical and mental impairment. Also during these 
years several excellent novels were added to his list, and 
some of his most popular short historical tales were 



126 LITERATURE. 

written. But, alas, his mental powers were failing fast, 
undoubtedly because of the immense strain to which he 
was subjecting them. In 1830 there was a very serious 
seizure. The end was bound to come soon. Two novels 
that he completed in the early part of 183 1, "Count 
Robert of Paris " and '' Castle Dangerous," warned his 
friends that he should be persuaded to desist. Finally a 
strange illusion fortunately possessed him. He fancied 
that all his debts were paid, and that he was once more 
"a free man," as he put it. He then accepted an offer, 
which the government had made to his physicians, to 
place a vessel of the navy at his disposal ; and he spent 
some months cruising about in the Mediterranean. 
While many of his faculties were gone, many remained 
as bright as ever ; and the year had much enjoyment for 
him. But the death of Goethe in March (1832), whom 
he had hoped to visit at Weimar, greatly depressed him. 
He desired to hasten home. In June he was in London, 
a dying man. With great difficulty he was got to his 
beloved Abbotsford, where he passionately longed to be. 
One day he fancied he could write again ; but when he 
realized that the fingers could not hold the pen in their 
clasp he sank back in his chair disheartened. " Get me 
to bed," said he; ''that is the only place." And in his 
bed he died, a few days later — Sept. 21, 1832. 

Though Scott's belief that his debts were paid was an 
illusion, it was not very far from the truth. The value 
of his copyrights was very great. In 1833, by an ar- 
rangement with his publisher, his general creditors were 
paid in full ; and in 1847, fifteen years after his death, 
the estate of Abbotsford was finally relieved of all in- 
cumbrance upon it, and an outstanding bond of ^10,000, 



SIR WALTER SCOTT, 1 27 

given to Constable to avert disaster some time betore the 
ultimate failure, was also discharged. Thus, though he 
was not granted the health and time he prayed for, the 
object that he had set himself so resolutely to effect was 
finally accomplished, and '' every penny " of his debt was 
paid. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT— A TEN-MINUTE TALK. 

By Lewis Edward Gates, A.B., 

Professor of English, Harvard University. 



What value have Sir Walter Scott's novels for men 
and women of to-day ? Is Scott still worth reading in 
this age, when science has taught us the importance of 
truth in fiction, and when novelists analyze action and 
motive, and explain and illustrate character with a 
thoroughness and delicate suggestiveness that Scott's 
<'big bow-wow " style never attains to? 

In point of fact, it is the very lack of subtlety in Scott, 
that makes him still eminently worth while. He opens 
to us a world where we may rest for a breathing space 
from the intellectual worry, the nervous wear and tear, 
and the over-refining casuistry of modern life. In Scott's 
world the brave men and the fair women and the treach- 
erous villains all know from the first with refreshing 
certainty what they want, and they set about securing 
this with delightful courage and single-heartedness. 
Life as Scott portrays it has freedom, directness, and 
simplicity. It may, of course, be urged that this simpli- 
fication of human nature tends to reduce life to a strug- 
gle among a few primitive instincts ; that love, hate, 
greed for power, jealousy, and two or three more of the 
good old elementary virtues and vices almost monopolize 
our attention. With this suggestion in mind it is easy 

128 



SCOTT: A TEN-MINUTE TALK. 129 

to understand the force of Thomas Love Peacock's 
parody on Scott's war songs : — 

*' The mountain sheep are sweeter, 

But the valley sheep are fatter. 
We therefore deem it meeter 

To carry off the latter. 
We made an expedition ; 

We met a host and quelled it ; 
We forced a strong position 

And killed the men who held it." 

Scott *s novels of adventure seem pretty nearly made 
up of this instinctive pursuit of obvious goods. Sir 
Andrew Aguecheek's formula for life — it '' consists of 
eating and drinking " — will prove fairly true for the life 
Scott shows us, provided we add fighting and love-mak- 
ing. Yet, with what splendid pageantry this life is put 
before us ! How magnificent a drama is set in motion 
by the action of these primitive instincts ! How the 
natural man within us rejoices in the gorgeous adequacy 
with which these simple functions are fulfilled! It is 
precisely for this reason that Scott is a fine tonic, and 
sends the blood more courageously through our veins. 
After reading him we feel that life is easier, simpler, 
better worth while, a braver and finer affair than we 
have been wont to believe it. To read and enjoy Scott 
is to renew and preserve our naivete, and, after all, 
naivete is only another name for immortality. Your 
only utterly disillusioned man is your corpse. 

Then again, as a pleasant and effective means of com- 
ing into close imaginative touch with the past of our 
race, Scott's novels are in many respects still unrivalled. 
Scott was one of the greatest antiquarians of his day. 



I30 



LITERATURE. 



He knew with the utmost minuteness and accuracy the 
manners and customs of feudal England, the character- 
istics of the life of each age from Saxon times down 
through the seventeenth century. All this knowledge 
he offers us in his novels, vitalized by his imagination, 
and made real by human sympathy. He has seen and 
felt this life more vividly and intensely than many of us 
see and feel the life that strikes continuously on our 
senses from day to day. Century after century he re- 
constructs for us this life of the past — reconstructs it 
perhaps with illusory beauty, with some meretricious 
decoration, with much disregard of its actual evils and 
ennuis. But, at any rate, he makes us aware of its large 
contours, of its most salient features, of its most signifi- 
cant qualities. Thus he enlarges our horizon and unites 
us vitally with the past of our race. We come to see 
ourselves as only one in a long series of generations. 
We escape from the egoism of the present, detach our- 
selves a bit from our own prejudices, realize whence we 
have come, see ourselves in perspective. To his own 
age Scott's discovery and reunification of the past was 
one of his most noteworthy services. Even to-day, after 
historical research has made such astonishing progress, 
Scott's novels are among the most prevailingly delight- 
ful and suggestive revealers of the past. 

Finally, to know Scott's writings well is to be made 
free of a singularly lovable and admirable nature. The 
charm of Scott's personality was irresistible. It imposed 
itself even on animals. Dogs adored him ; a small pig 
used to follow him with romantic affection when he went 
for his walks on the Abbotsford estate. Among peasants, 
as among literary and society notabilities, he was the 



SCOTT : A TEN-MINUTE TALK. 



131 



most welcome of guests. His geniality, his humor, his 
frank, hearty manliness, his generosity, his readiness to 
amuse and to be amused, his endless store of entertain- 
ing anecdote, his tact and his union of sympathy with 
originality, made him the best of companions for an hour 
or for a lifetime. His friendships were generous and 
enduring. All these qualities of mind and heart are in 
one way or another dimly felt even to-day as a reader 
runs through Scott's stories. We are taken a bit into 
the confidence of a very noble nature — of a man of large 
mind, sane instincts, enduring courage, rich sympathy 
and far-ranging experience. We feel that Scott has 
lived widely and diversely, and found life good ; we feel 
that he has suffered deeply and yet has found in human 
comradeship something that atones. We are insensibly 
led to an imitation of his frank, courageous acceptance 
of life — of this life of ours that mixes so quaintly its 
good and its evil. 

For all these reasons, then, Scott remains — despite 
our modernity, despite our increase in subtlety and accom- 
plishment and sophistication — indeed, largely because 
of these very characteristics of the life of to-day — a 
permanent source of culture and delight. 



SCOTT'S POETRY, 



In the maturity of his powers he wrote '' The Lay of 

the Last Minstrel," which was received with a rapture 

of enthusiasm. The selection is a portrait of the aged 

harper : — 

" The way was long, the wind was cold, 
The minstrel was infirm and old. 
His withered cheek and tresses gray 
Seemed to have known a better day. 
The harp, his sole remaining joy. 
Was carried by an orphan boy. 
The last of all the bards was he 
Who sung of border chivalry. 
For, well-a-day ! their date was fled ; 
His tuneful brethren all were dead, 
And he, neglected and oppressed, 
Wished to be with them and at rest. 
No more, on prancing palfrey borne, 
He carolled, light as lark at morn ; 
No longer, courted and caressed. 
High placed in hall a welcome guest. 
He poured to lord and lady gay 
The unpremeditated lay. 
Old times were changed, old manners gone ; 
A stranger filled the Stuarts' throne ; 
The bigots of the iron time 
Had called his harmless art a crime. 
A wandering harper, scorned and poor, 
He begged his bread from door to door, 
And tuned, to please a peasant's ear. 
The harp a king had loved to hear." 



SCOTT'S POETRY. 1 33 

The following lines on Melrose Abbey, from the same 
poem, show Scott's descriptive powers at their best : — 

♦' If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright 
Go visit it by the pale moonlight ; 
For the gay beams of lightsome day 
Gild but to flout the ruins gray, 




Melrose Abbey from the Southeast. 

When the broken arches are black in night, 
And each shafted oriel glimmers white ; 
When the cold lighf s uncertain shower 
Streams on the ruined central tower ; 
When buttress and buttress, alternately. 
Seemed framed of ebon and ivory ; 
When silver edges the imagVy, 
And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die ; 
When distant Tweed is heard to rave, 



J ^4 LITERATURE. 

And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave ; 
Then go — but go alone the while — 
Then view St. David's ruined pile, 
And, home returning, soothly swear 
Was never scene so sad and fair." 



Scott made the mountains and lakes of Scotland fa- 
mous throughout the world. The following lines, de- 
scribing Loch Katrine, are selected from " The Lady of 
the Lake " : — 

" And now, to issue from the glen, 
No pathway meets the wanderer's ken, 
Unless he climb, with footing nice, 
A far-projecting precipice. 




The Silver Strand, Loch Katrine. 



SCOTT'S POETRY. 



135 




The Trosachs. 

The broom^s tough roots his ladder made 
The hazel saplings lent their aid ; 
And thus an airy point he won, 
Where, gleaming with the setting sun. 
One burnished sheet of living gold. 
Loch Katrine lay beneath him rolPd, 
In all her length far winding lay, 
With promontory, creek and bay, 



And islands that, empurpled bright. 

Floated amid the livelier light, 

And mountains that like giants stand, 

To sentinel enchanted land. 

High on the south huge Benvenue 

Down on the lake in masses threw 

Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurPd, 

The fragments of an earlier world ; 



136 



LITER A TURK. 

A wildering forest featherM o'er 
His ruined sides and summit hoar : 
While on the north, through middle air, 
Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare." 



This is the most popular of Scott's poems. It is 
interesting in story and plot, chivalric in type, and richly 
picturesque. Its publication carried Scott's fame as a 




Roslin's Glen. 



poet to its most brilliant height, 
is from the boat song : — 



The following stanza 



Hail to the chief who in triumph advances ! 

Honored and blessed be the ever-green pine I 
Long may the tree, in his banner that glances, 

Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line | 




Sir Walter Scott. 



SCOTT'S POETRY. 1 39 

Heaven send it happy dew, 

Earth lend it sap anew, 
Gaily to bourgeon and broadly to grow ; 

While every highland glen 

Sends our shout back agen, 
' Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho ! ieroe ! '" 

The ruins of Roslin Castle, the baronial residence 
of the ancient family of St. Clair, located near a ro- 
mantic and woody dell, are referred to in the '' Gray 
Brother " : — 

" Who knows not Melville's beechy grove 
And Roslin's rocky glen, 
Dalkeith, which all the virtues love. 
And classic Hawthornden." 



ABBOTS FORD : SCOTT'S HOME. 



** I understand his romances the better for having seen his house, and 
his house the better for having read his romances." — Nathaniel Haw- 
thorne. 

Abbotsford is located about three miles west of Mel- 
rose, in the county of Roxburgh, Scotland. Before the 
estate became, in 1 8 1 1 , the property of Sir Walter Scott, 




Map of Country about Edinburgh. 



the site of the house and grounds formed a small farm 
known by the name of Clarty Hole. The new name 
was the invention of the poet, who loved thus to connect 
himself with the days when Melrose abbots passed over 
the fords of the River Tweed. 



ABBOTSFORD: SCOTT'S HOME. 141 

On a sloping bank overhanging the river, with the 
Selkirk hills behind, Scott built at first a small villa, now 
the western wing of the castle. Afterward, as his income 
increased, he added the remaining portions of the build- 
ing, on no uniform plan, but with the desire of combining 
in it some of the features of those ancient works of Scot- 
tish architecture which he most venerated. The result 
is a singularly picturesque and irregular pile, such an one 
as nobody but Scott would have thought of erecting, yet 
eminently imposing in its general effect, and in most of 
its details full of historic interest and beauty. 

In a letter to his brother-in-law, Mr. Carpenter, Scott 
describes his new property, adding : — 

" I intend building a small cottage here for my summer abode, 
being obliged by law, as well as by inclination, to make this 
country my residence for some months of every year. This is the 
greatest incident which has lately taken place in our domestic 
concerns, and I assure you we are not a little proud of being greeted 
as laird and lady of Abbotsford.'''' 

The greatest practical romance of Scott's life was the 
improvement of the almost sterile soil and the construc- 
tion of the quaint, picturesque edifice, as much castle as 
mansion, of Abbotsford. The most fascinating scheme 
among all the wild dreams of his fancy, it has been said, 
was to purchase lands ; to raise himself a fairy castle ; 
to become, not the minstrel of a lord as were many of 
those of old, but a minstrel-lord himself. The practical 
romance grew. On the banks of the Tweed began to rise 
the fairy castle, quaint and beautiful. Lands were added 
to lands ; over hill and dale spread the dark embossment 
of future woods ; Abbotsford was spoken of far and wide. 



142 



LITERATURE. 



If you expect a great castle you will be disappointed. 
It is described as resembling an old French chateau, 
with its miniature towers and small windows grafted 
upon an Elizabethan mansion. It occupies considerable 
ground, but is deficient in massiveness and loftiness. 
On a castellated gateway is hung an iron collar used 
for holding culprits by the neck brought from Thrieve 




Abbotsford: The Garden Front. 



Castle, the ancient seat of the Douglases in Galloway. 
The mansion shows portico, bay windows of painted 
glass, battlemented gables and turrets. There is a good 
deal of carved work on the corbels and escutcheons. 
Through a light screen of freestone, finely carved and 
arched, the garden and greenhouse may be seen. On 
all sides, except toward the river, the house connects 
itself with the garden, according to an old, picturesque 




The Drawing-room at Abbotsford. 




Sir Walter Scott's Armory. 



ABBOTSFORD: SCOTT'S HOME. 



145 



fashion. On the right hand of the portico is a carved 
image of Scott's favorite dog, Maida ; on the left, a 
Gothic fountain from the old cross of Edinburgh. A 
square tower is ascended by steps from the outside ; at 
the other end is a round tower covered with ivy. The 
house is more than one hundred and fifty feet long in 
front, and its walls abound in heraldic and other carvings. 
There is a balcony ranging along the whole front, where 
during dinner John of Skye, the wild piper, used to strut 
to and fro playing Scotch airs. 

The porch, upon which gigantic stags' horns are fas- 
tened, opens into a fine hall, forty feet long and twenty 
feet wide and high, lined with dark oak wainscot richly 
carved. The ceiling is a series of arches, also, of carved 
oak, with an armorial shield emblazoned in colors and 
metals, upon the centre of each beam. Around the 
cornice are two rows of escutcheons, bearing the arms 
of thirty or forty of the old chieftains of the border. A 
running inscription all around in black letter reads as 
follows : — 

" These be the coat arms of the Clannis and chief inen of name 
vvha keepit the marchys of Scotland in the auld time for the 
Kynge. Trewe were they in their tyme, and in their defense God 
them defendit." 

Over and round a doorway are the shields of Scott's 
particular personal friends. The room is crowded with 
curiosities — ancient armor, cuirasses and eagles from 
Waterloo, helmets and spurs, historic swords, and mas- 
sive chairs. 

The other show apartments are the drawing-room, 
dining-room, breakfast-room, armory, library, and study. 



146 



LIT ERA TURK. 



Raeburn's portrait, showing Scott sitting by a ruined 
wall with two dogs, is in the drawing-room, as is also a 
portrait of Lady Scott. Mr. Hawthorne, in describing 
the latter, says it shows *' a brunette, with black hair and 
eyes, very pretty, warm, vivacious, and un-English." 
The dining-room, a plain, well-proportioned apartment, 
contains a number of historical portraits. From the 
ceiling hangs a large and handsome chandelier, which 




The Library at Abbotsford. 



had formerly adorned some stately palace. The armory 
is crowded with curiosities. The library, lighted by 
windows looking out upon the Tweed, contains over fifty 
thousand volumes — many upon Scottish history, magic, 
and antiquities. 

In the study, which really was the author's workshop. 



■iBBOTSFORD: SCOTT'S HOME. 



H7 



there is only a simple table, upon which still remains 
the massive silver inkstand always used by Scott, and 
constantly kept clear of ink-stains. Scott was neat, 
even methodical, in his habits, and eschewed all literary 
litter. He kept his papers in most exact and regular 
order, each document duly inscribed with its date and 
the name of its writer or subject, and tied with red 
tape. He was careful, even particular, with his books, 
the majority, which he considered worth the honor and 
cost, being handsomely bound and lettered ; and almost 
every summer he had a handy bookbinder at Abbots- 
ford, who made necessary repairs, retouching and gilding 
and repasting the loosening title labels. When he lent 
a book, which was seldom, he took a piece of wood the 
size of the volume, pasted on one of the edges a slip of 
paper on which were written the title of the book, the 
borrower's name and address, the date of lending, and 
the day on which it should be returned. These blocks 
were put upon the shelves, and remained there, a record 
and a reminder, until the loaned books were returned. 

Abbotsford was usually taxed to its utmost to accom- 
modate its many guests : some of them old and valued 
friends ; some, persons of distinction in literature, sci- 
ence, and society ; some, drawn from abroad to see the 
country he had described so well ; and some, accepting 
the slightest hint as an invitation, quartering themselves 
upon its owner, with selfish curiosity, for several days at 
a time. Lady Scott was not generally supposed to be a 
particularly sagacious or brilliant woman ; but there was 
wisdom as well as wit in her remark that '' Abbotsford 
was very like a large hotel, except that people did not 
pay." 



148 LITERATURE. 

Many of the trees comprising the Abbotsford forest 
were brought from distant countries, and the gardens 
and grounds were planned and planted by Scott himself. 
It was his delight, when his literary work for the day 
was finished, to engage in the sports and pleasures of 
rural life, followed usually by his retinue of dogs ; and 
none was happier than that " hard-featured and faithful 
old forester, Tom Purdie, whom Scott's kindness had 
changed from a poacher into a devoted servant, when 
the green shooting coat, white hat, and drab trousers of 
the jovial sheriff appeared in the distance on the path 
that led to the plantations." 



CRITICAL STUDIES AND REMINISCENCES. 



DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF SCOTT S POETRY. 

The distinctive features of the poetry of Scott are 
ease, rapidity of movement, a spirited flow of narrative 
that holds our attention, an out-of-doors atmosphere and 
power of natural description, an occasional intrusion of a 
gentle personal sadness, and but little more. The subtle 
and mystical element so characteristic of the poetry of 
Wordsworth and Coleridge is not to be found in that 
of Scott, while in lyrical power he does not approach 
Shelley. We find, instead, an intense sense of reality 
in all his natural descriptions ; it surrounds them with 
an indefinable atmosphere, because they are so transpar- 
ently true. He possessed in a remarkable degree the 
rare power of grasping life, as it were, with the bare 
hand; of learning by a shrewd insight into men's lives, 
and by a healthy fellowship with nature in all her 
moods. — Pancoast. 

the charm of scott's verse. 

It has, indeed, I'arely happened in the history of liter- 
ature that poems written off-hand like these, with so little 
pains and so little revision, have gained more than a 
brief lease of life. Scott himself, with his delightful 

149 



I50 



LIT ERA TURE. 



modesty, did not look for permanent fame as a poet. In 
all that he anywhere says of his poetry his words are 
quite sound, simple, and unpretending. He recognized 
the limits of his power and the sources of his popularity ; 
he was pleased, but not elated, by success. Success 
could, indeed, do nothing but good to so manly and 
healthy a nature. The real and abiding charm of his 
verse consists not in its style, or in its stock of ideas, 
nor in any significance underlying the narrative, but in 
qualities which depend upon personal character. It is 
the expression of a generous nature, with a living inter- 
est in the outward spectacle of the world, a quick sym- 
pathy with the actors in the long drama of life, and a 
keen sense of relation to the earth and enjoyment of it. 
It is the expression of a lover of his own land, of its 
mountains and glens and rivers and lakes, dearer for the 
sake of the story of its people, a story as varied and pic- 
turesque as the scenery itself. The literary critic will 
find a hundred faults in his poems ; but the boy, en- 
tranced by the tale, does not know they are there, and 
the man, jaded with care and weary of books, does not 
mind them, finding refreshment in verse inspired with 
the breath of the open air, unstudied in its animation, 
unforced in its sentiment, and making simple appeal 
to his memory and imagination. — Charles Eliot 
Norton. 

scott's imaginative power. 

Walter Scott ranks in imaginative power hardly below 
any writer save Homer and Shakespeare. His best 
works are his novels ; but he holds a high place as a 
poet in virtue of his metrical romances and of his lyrical 



CRITICAL STUDIES OF SCOTT, 



51 



pieces and ballads. His poetry flowed from a nature 
in which strength, high spirit, and active energy were 
united with tender sensibility ; and with an imagination 
wonderfully lively, and directed by historic and antiqua- 
rian surroundings, and by personal associations toward 
the feudal past. Homer may have been a warrior de- 
barred from battle by blindness ; Scott would perhaps 
have been a soldier if he had not been lame. — Goldwin 
Smith. 

SCOTT AND THE FUTURE. 

To couple the name of Scott with dulness sounds 
profane, especially when one remembers the kind of lit- 
erature which is bought with avidity at railway bookstalls, 
and for some mysterious reason supposed to be amusing. 
If Scott is to be called dull, what reputation is to be 
pronounced safe .'' That Scott adulterated his writings 
with inferior materials, and in some cases beat out his 
gold uncommonly thin, cannot be denied. But when 
time has done its worst, will there be some permanent 
residue to delight a distant posterity, or w411 his whole 
work gradually crumble into fragments } Will some of 
his best performances stand out like a cathedral amongst 
ruined hovels, or will they sink into the dust together, 
and the outlines of what once charmed the world be 
traced only by historians of literature 1 It is a painful 
task to examine such questions impartially. This prob- 
ing a great reputation, and doubting whether we can 
come to anything solid at the bottom, is specially painful 
in regard to Scott. For he has at least this merit, that 
he is one of those rare natures for whom we feel not 
merely admiration, but affection. We cherish the fame 



^52 



LITERA TURE. 



of Pope or Byron or Swift in spite of, not on account of, 
their personal characters ; if we satisfied ourselves that 
their literary reputations were founded on the sand we 
might partly console ourselves with the thought that we 
were only depriving bad men of a title to genius. But 
for Scott men must feel even in stronger measure that 
kind of warm fraternal regard which Macaulay and 
Thackeray expressed for the amiable but perhaps rather 
cold-blooded Addison. The manliness and the sweet- 
ness of the man's nature predispose us to return the 
most favorable verdict in our power. And we may add 
that Scott is one of the last great English writers whose 
influence extended beyond his island, and gave a stimulus 
to the development of European thought. We cannot 
afford to surrender our faith in one to whom, whatever 
his permanent merits, we must trace so much that is 
characteristic of the mind of the nineteenth century. 
Whilst, finally, if we have any Scotch blood in our veins, 
we must be more or less than men to turn a deaf ear to 
the promptings of patriotism. When Shakespeare's fame 
decays everywhere else the inhabitants of Stratford-on- 
Avon, if it still exist, should still revere their tutelary 
saint ; and the old town of Edinburgh should tremble in 
its foundation when a sacrilegious hand is laid upon the 
glory of Scott. — Leslie Stephen. 

scott's great ambition. 

There is something of irony in such a result of the 
herculean labors of Scott to found and endow a new 
branch of the clan of Scott. He valued his works little 
compared with the house and lands which they were to 



CRITICAL STUDIES OF SCOTT. 



153 



be the means of gaining for his descendants ; yet every 
end for which he struggled so gallantly is all but lost, 
while his works have gained more of added lustre from 
the losing battle which he fought so long than they could 
have gained from his success. What there was in him 
of true grandeur could never have been seen had the fifth 
act of his life been less tragic than it was. Generous, 
large-hearted, and magnanimous as Scott was, there was 
something in his days of prosperity that fell short of 
what men need for their highest ideal of a strong man. 

Unbroken success, unrivalled popularity, imaginative 
effort flowing almost as steadily as the current of a 
stream, — these are characteristics which, even when en- 
hanced as they were in his case by the power to defy 
physical pain and to live in his imaginative world when 
his body was writhing in torture, fail to touch the heroic 
point. Till calamity came Scott appeared to be a nearly 
complete natural man, but no more. Then first was per- 
ceived in him something above nature, something which 
could endure through every end in life for which he had 
fought so boldly should be defeated, — something which 
could endure and more than endure, which could shoot a 
soft transparence of its own through his years of dark- 
ness and decay. 

That there was nothing very elevated in Scott's per- 
sonal or moral or political or literary ends ; that he 
never for a moment thought of himself as one who was 
bound to leave the earth better than he found it ; that he 
never seems to have so much as contemplated a social or 
political life for which he ought to contend ; that he lived 
to some extent like a child blowing soap-bubbles, the 
brightest and most gorgeous of which, the Abbotsford 



154 LITER AT URE. 

bubble, vanished before his eyes, — is not a take-off from 
the charm of his career, but adds to it the very specialty 
of its fascination. For it was his entire unconsciousness 
of moral or spiritual efforts, the simple, straightforward 
way in which he labored for ends of the most ordinary 
kind, which made it clear how much greater the man was 
than his ends, how great was the mind and character 
which i^rosperity failed to display, but which became visi- 
ble at once as soon as the storm came down and the 
night fell. Few men who battle avowedly for the right 
battle for it with the calm fortitude, the cheerful equa- 
nimity, with which Scott battled to fulfil his engage- 
ments and to save his family from ruin. — Richard H. 

HUTTON. 

SCOTT, THE REVEALER OF HIS OWN COUNTRY. 

It is upon Scott's early studies of the life of his own 
country, and what we have ventured to call his revelation 
of that country to the other nations of the earth, that his 
fame will always rest. Taken all in all, no such un- 
broken line of worthy and often brilliant work has been 
left by any other workman in this region of literature. 
They have done more to brighten the world, to soothe 
the weary, to elevate the standard of general, and what 
if the reader pleases we may call commonplace, excel- 
lence than any other works of fiction the world has ever 
seen. Not a word in them all has ever insinuated evil 
or palliated dishonor. — Mrs. Oliphant. 



CRITICAL STUDIES 01 SCOTI. 155 



SCOTT, THE CREATOR OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL. 

Scott may be said to have created the historical novel. 
He stands alone in that branch of literary work. Others 
have made, it may be, one great success in the novel of 
history, such as Thackeray in " Henry Esmond," George 
Eliot in '^Romola," and Robert Louis Stevenson in 
*' The Master of Ballantrae " ; but Scott has brought 
alike the times of the Crusaders and of the Stuarts before 
us. He has peopled the land of Palestine and the hills 
of Scotland, the forests of England and the borders of 
the Rhine, for our edification and delight. Paladin and 
peasant, earl and yeoman, kings and their jesters, bluff 
men-at-arms and gentle bower maidens, all spring into 
life again at the touch of the " great enchanter." The 
Waverley novels are the splendid witness of the breadth, 
sympathy, and purity of one of the great creative intel- 
lects of our literature, — worthy, indeed, of a place among 
the immortals, side by side with Chaucer, and nearest to 
the feet of Shakespeare himself. — Pancoast. 

SCOTT UNITES THE LOWLANDS AND HIGHLANDS. 

There is a certain abandon in Scott's work which re- 
moves it from the dignity of the ancient writers ; but we 
are repaid for this loss by the intensity and the animated 
movement, the clear daylight, and the inspired delight in 
and with which he invented and wrote his stories. It is 
not composition ; it is Scott actually present in each of 
his personages, doing their deeds and speaking their 
thoughts. His national tales — and his own country 



156 



LIT ERA TURE. 



was his best inspiration — are written with such love for 
the characters and the scenes that we feel his living joy 
and love underneath each of the stories as a completing 
charm, as a spirit that enchants the whole. And in 
these tales and in his poems his own deep kindliness, 
his sympathy with human nature, united after years of 
enmity, the Highlands to the Lowlands. — Stopford 
A. Brooke. 

SOME OF SCOTT's CHARACTERS. 

The fame of Scotland's scenery, the inspiration of her 
romantic history, and the union in sentiment of her 




Loch Katrine, Ellen's Isle. 



CRITICAL STUDIES OF SCOTT. 



157 



peoples — lowlanders and highlanders — are due very 
largely to the leadership of Sir Walter Scott. He 
speaks and acts through characters which were the nat- 
ural product of the country through centuries of advanc- 
ing civilization. In bringing back '' the moss-trooper 
and the border knight, the glowing tartans and the tragic 
passion of the highland chieftains," he introduces Scot- 
land to herself, and suggests a newer and broader out- 
look and a larger and richer life. 

Scott's characters do not flourish outside of the envi- 
ronments of their origin. They cannot easily be trans- 
planted. Among the most famous are the following : — 

Dominie Sa?)ipson. Absent-minded, faithful, and affectionate, 
with a remarkable awkwardness of manners and simplicity of char- 
acter. His language was always quaint, and, having been edu- 
cated for the church, he frequently used the forcible and peculiar 
phraseology of the Scriptures. Found in " Guy Mannering." 

Robin Hood. The gallant and generous "king of outlaws and 
prince of good fellows." Found in " Ivanhoe." 

Jeanie Deans. David Deans' daughter. A perfect model of 
sober heroism — of the union of good sense with strong affections. 
Found in ♦' The Heart of Midlothian." 

Meg Merrilies. Henry Bertram's gypsy nurse and a character 
of commanding interest. She was venerated by her tribe, over 
whom she held arbitrary authority. She impressed beholders with 
feelings of superstitious awe. Devoted to Henry Bertram, weird 
and oracular, she moves through the novel like a spirit of destiny. 
Found in *' Guy Mannering." 

Madge Wildfire. Meg Murdockson's simple-minded daughter. 
She was very loquacious, and her talk was lively but disjointed. 
" Pilgrim's Progress" was the favorite subject of her conversation. 
She received the name of Madge Wildfire from the frequency of 
her singing the following song : — 

'T glance like the wildfire through country and town, 
I am seen on the causeway, I 'm seen on the down. 



158 LITERATURE. 

The lightning that flashes so bright and so free 
Is scarcely so blithe or so bonny as me." 

Found in " The Heart of Midlothian." 

Edie Ochiltree. A mendicant who had formerly been a soldier. 
He played an important part in bringing to a happy issue the love 
affairs of Lovel and Miss Wardour, and in his old age became a 
member of their household. Found in " The Antiquary." 

Meg Dods. Hostess of Cleikum Inn. Meg's especial antipathy 
was the fashionable hotel at St. Ronan's well. Desiring no mas- 
ter, Meg refused to share her small fortune with any of the numer- 
ous aspirants for her hand. She exerted arbitrary sway over her 
servants and guests. Found in " St. Ronan's Well." 

Other characters equally widely known are Fergus and Flora 
Maclvor in "Waverley"; Mr. Oldbuck, Bailie Littlejohn, and 
Monkbarns in "The Antiquary"; Preacher Macbrian in "Old 
Mortality"; MacGregor, Helen Campbell, and Diana Vernon in 
"Rob Roy"; Saddletree and Sharpitlaw in " The Heart of Mid- 
lothian"; Edgar Ravenswood, Caleb Balderstone, and Lucy Ash- 
ton in " The Bride of Lammermoor" ; Isaac the Jew, Ivanhoe, and 
Lady Rowena in "Ivanhoe"; Amy Robsart in " Kenilworth " ; 
Halbert Glendinning in " The Monastery"; and Alice Lee in 
" Woodstock." 

SCOTT, A GENUINE MAN. 

The surliest critic must allow that Scott was a genuine 
man, which itself is a great matter. No affectation, fan- 
tasticality, or distortion dwelt in him, no shadow of cant. 
Nay, withal was he not a right brave and strong man 
according to his kind } A most composed, invincible 
man ; in difficulty and distress knowing no discourage- 
ment ; Samson-like, carrying off on his strong Samson 
shoulders the gates that would imprison him. — Car- 

LYLE. 



REMINISCENCES OF SCOTT, 159 



SCOTT S CAPACITY FOR UNIFORM WORK. 

There is no evidence that any one of the novels was 
labored or even so much as carefully composed. Scott's 
method of composition was always the same ; and when 
writing an imaginative work the rate of progress seems 
to have been pretty even, depending iiiuch more upon 
the absence of disturbing engagements than on any men- 
tal irregularity. The morning was always his brightest 
time ; but morning or evening, in country or in town, 
well or ill, writing with his own pen or dictating to an 
amanuensis in the intervals of screaming fits due to the 
torture of cramp in the stomach, Scott spun away at his 
imaginative web almost as evenly as a silkworm spins at 
its golden cocoon. — Richard H. Hutton. 

scott's great secret of success. 

Scott's son-in-law, Mr. Lockhart, in describing a jour- 
ney through Scotland, says that wherever Scott slept, 
whether in a noble mansion or in the shabbiest of coun- 
try inns, he very rarely mounted the carriage in the 
morning without having ready a package of manuscript, 
corded and sealed, and addressed to his printer in Edin- 
burgh. And yet all the while he kept himself thor- 
oughly well informed upon contemporary literature of 
all sorts. Mr. Lockhart gives as the grand secret his 
perpetual practice of his own grand maxim, '' Never 
to be doing nothing." Every moment was turned to 
account, and thus he had leisure for everything. 

On his return from Naples in June, 1832, Scott was 



I 60 • LIT ERA TURE. 

at once conveyed to Abbotsford, a complete wreck in 
body and mind. He desired to be wheeled through his 
rooms, and as members of his family moved him leisurely 
for an hour or more up and down the hall and the great 
library, he kept saying : '^ I have seen much, but noth- 
ing like my ain house. Give me one turn more." 

SCOTT IN CONVERSATION. 

The conversation of Scott was frank, hearty, pictu- 
resque, and dramatic. During the time of my visit he 
inclined to the comic rather than the grave in his anec- 
dotes and stories, and such, I was told, was his general 
inclination. He relished a joke or a trait of humor in 
social intercourse, and laughed with right good will. He 
talked, not for effect or display, but from the flow of his 
spirits, the stories of his memory, and the vigor of his 
imagination. He had a natural turn for narration ; and 
his narratives and descriptions were without effort, yet 
wonderfully graphic. He placed the scene before you 
like a picture ; he gave the dialogue with the appropriate 
dialect or peculiarities, and described the appearance and 
characters of his personages with that spirit and felicity 
evinced in his writings. He made himself so thoroughly 
the companion of those with whom he happened to be 
that they forgot for a time his vast superiority, and only 
recollected and wondered, when all was over, that it was 
Scott with whom they had been on such familiar terms, 
and in whose society they had felt so perfectly at ease. 
— Washington Irving. 



REMINISCENCES OF SCOTT. l6l 



SCOTT S HUMOR. 

The following quotation is given as illustrating Scott's 
humor. It was spoken to Ballantyne, the printer and 
journalist, who thought of leaving Edinburgh to reside 
in the country : — 

"When our Saviour Himself was to be led into temptation, the 
first thing the devil thought of was to get Him into the wilderness." 

scott's personality. 

Sir Walter Scott was more than six feet in height, 
though the lameness of his right limb caused him to 
walk awkwardly. The Rev. J. C. Young, in a memoir 
of C. M. Young, the tragedian, gives the following 
description of his personal appearance : — 

" It was not long before we heard the eager tread of a stamping 
heel resounding through the corridor, and in another second the 
door was flung open, and in limped Scott himself. His light-blue, 
waggish eye, sheltered, almost screened, by its overhanging pent- 
house of straw-colored, bushy brows ; his scant, sandy-colored 
hair, the Shakespearean length of his upper lip, his towering Pisgah 
of a forehead, which gave elevation and dignity to a physiognomy 
otherwise deficient in both; his abrupt movements, the mingled 
humor, urbanity, and benevolence of his smile, all recur to me with 
startling reality." 

WASHINGTON IRVING's REMINISCENCE OF SCOTT. 

Among the many visitors at Abbotsford was Wash- 
ington Irving. In one of his sketches he thus describes 
his first meeting with Scott : — 



1 6 2 LIT ERA TURE. 

"In a little while the 'lord of the castle' himself made his 
appearance. I knew him at once by the descriptions I had read 
and heard, and the likenesses that had been published. He was 
tall, and of a large and powerful frame. His dress was simple, 
and almost rustic. An old green shooting-coat with a dog whistle 
at the buttonhole, brown linen pantaloons, stout shoes that tied at 
the ankles, and a white hat that had evidently seen service. He 
came limping up the gravel walk, aiding himself by a stout walk- 
ing staff, but moving rapidly, and with vigor. By his side jogged 
along a large iron-gray staghound of the most grave demeanor.'" 



SCOTT S BROAD SCOTCH. 

Scott's pronunciation of words, considered separately, 
was seldom much different from that of a well-educated 
EngUshman of his time ; but the tone and accent of his 
speech was always broadly Scotch. 

scott's bodily strength. 

Scott says that when he was a young man he could 
with one hand, and by grasping the horn, lift a black- 
smith's anvil. " But," he adds, *' I could do it only 
before breakfast." He was an expert as well as power- 
ful wielder of the axe. 

SCOTT, A SMOKER. 

Smokers may be glad to know that Scott smoked 
both pipes and cigars. In a letter to his son he says : 
'' As you hussars smoke, I will send you one of my 
pipes, but you must let me know how I can send it 
safely. It is a very handsome one, though not my 
best." 



REMINISCENCES OF SCOTT. 



SCOTT S DOGS. 



163 



Of Scott's deerhounds there is an unbroken succes- 
sion. It was Camp on whose death he rehnquished a 
dinner invitation previously accepted, on the ground 
that the death of an old friend rendered him unwilling 
to dine out ; Maida, to whom he erected a marble monu- 
ment ; and Nimrod, of whom he spoke so affectingly as 
too good a dog for his diminished fortunes. 

scott's activity in youth. 

Lockhart gives us many instances of Scott's activity 
in his boyhood and youth. Despite his lameness he 
was noted for his fearlessness in climbing and for his 
strength and hardihood in fighting. A frolic or a fight 
always found him ready, and he seemed equally well 
prepared for either. 

scott's youthful strategy. 

Scott's sagacity in judging of the characters of others 
was shown even as a schoolboy. He had long desired 
to get above a schoolfellow who defied all his efforts. 
Scott noticed that whenever a question was asked the 
lad's fingers grasped a particular button on his waist- 
coat, while his mind went in search of the answer. 
Scott accordingly concluded that if he would remove 
this button his rival would be beaten ; and so it proved. 
The button was cut off ; and the next time the lad was 
questioned, his fingers being unable to find the button, 
and his eyes going in perplexed search after his fingers, 



1 64 LITER A TUBE. 

he Stood confounded ; and Scott gained by strategy the 
place which he failed to gain by mere industry. 

scott's advice to his son. 

In one of Scott's letters to his son, he expresses him- 
self on the necessity and dignity of labor as follows : — 

" I rely upon it that you are now working hard in the classical 
mine, getting out the rubbish as fast as you can, and preparing 
yourself to collect the ore. I cannot too L.uch impress upon your 
mind that labor is the condition which .God has imposed upon us 
in every station of life. There is nothing worth having that can 
be had without it, from the bread which the peasant M^ins with the 
sweat of his brow to the sports by which the rich man must get 
rid of his emmi. The only difference between them is that the 
poor man labors to get a dinner for his appetite, the rich man to 
get an appetite for his dinner. As for knowledge, it can no more 
be planted in the human mind without labor than a field of wheat 
can be produced without the previous use of the plow. There is 
indeed this great difference — that chance or circumstance may so 
cause it that another may reap what the farmer sows ; but no man 
can be deprived, whether by accident or misfortune, of the fruits of 
his own study, and the liberal and extended acquisitions of knowl- 
edge that he makes are all for his own use. Labor, my dear boy, 
therefore, and improve the time. In youth our steps are light, and 
our minds are ductile, and knowledge is easily laid up. But if we 
neglect our spring, our summer will be useless and contemptible, 
our harvest will be chaff, and the winter of our old age unrespected 
and desolate." 

scott's deathbed admonition to his son-in-law. 

On his deathbed it consoled him that he had not com- 
promised the interests of virtue. He said to his son- 
in-law : — 

*' Lockhart, I may have but a minute to speak to 
you. My dear, be a good man — be virtuous, be re- 



REMINISCENCES OF SCOTT. I 65 

ligious — be a good man. Nothing else will give you 
comfort when you come to lie here." 



SCOTT S FUNERAL AND DRYBURGH ABBEY. 

Though intended by the family to be strictly private, 
Scott's funeral was attended by a large concourse of 
friends and admirers from all parts of Scotland. By 
their own request Sir Walter's old domestics and forest- 
ers bore the cofhn to the hearse, and from the hearse to 
the grave, by the side of his wife, in the north transept 
of the old Abbey of Dryburgh. 

Dryburgh is a sweet old monastic seclusion on the 
River Tweed, about four miles from Melrose. Here, 
lying deep below the surrounding country, the river 
sweeps on between high, rocky banks overhung with 
that fine growth of trees which no river presents in 
more beauty, abundance, and luxuriance. The ruins of 
the abbey tower magnificently above the trees. The 
interior is now greensward, and two rows of cedars grow 
where formerly stood the pillars of the aisles. The 
cloisters and south transept are more entire, and display 
much fine workmanship. The square, from one pillar 
of the aisle to the next, which in many churches, as in 
Melrose, formed a confessional, forms here a burial- 
place. It is that of the Scots of Haliburton, from 
whom Scott was descended ; and that was probably one 
reason why he chose this place, though its monastic 
beauty and associations were no doubt the main causes. 
The ruined arches and the trees about give it the utmost 
picturesque effect. It is a mausoleum in entire keeping- 
with his character, genius, and feelings. 



1 66 



LITER A TURE. 



There is no solemn monument — neither '* storied urn " 
nor "ornamented bust" — over Scott's grave. A solid 




The Chantrey Bust of Scott. 



block of Aberdeen granite, shaped after a design by 
Chantrey, covers the remains, and bears the simple 
inscription : — 



SIR WALTER SCOTT, BARONET. 



Died September 21st, 1832. 




Dryburgh Abbey, from the Cloister Court. 




Scott's Tomb, at Dryburgh Abbey. 



REMINISCENCES OF SCOTT. 1 69 



CHANTREY S BUST OF SCOTT. 

The marble bust done by Sir Francis Chantrey in 
1820, now at Abbotsford, seems to command the most 
favorable criticism of all Scott's likenesses. 

SCOTT's monument in EDINBURGH. 

Among the world's memorials of great men, there 
are few more celebrated for architectural splendor than 
the monument to Sir Walter Scott, located on Princess 
Street, Edinburgh. It is slightly more than two hun- 
dred feet high, and is built of finely grained brown 
sandstone in the pointed style developed at Melrose 
Abbey. The first story consists of a noble grained 
vault, open on four sides, and flanked by large, richly 
decorated, and pinnacled turrets. Beneath this arch 
is a statue nine feet high, cut from a single block of 
marble, and representing Scott seated on a rock and 
wrapped in a shepherd's plaid, holding book and pen, 
and attended by Maida lying at his feet. The second 
story is a small but lofty room, brilliantly lighted with 
colored windows. Around the exterior of the second 
and third stories are galleries from which views can be 
had of the elaborate sculpture with which the monument 
is enriched, and, especially from the upper gallery, of 
the city and its vicinity. 



SOME QUERIES AND ANSWERS. 



QUERIES. 



1. What poem of Robert Browning's describes one of Scott's 
ancestors? 

2. What incidents in Scott's life show his love for his dogs Camp 
and Maida? 

3. What poem of Scott's was composed in the saddle, and has 
the stir of a cavalry charge in it? 

4. In one of Scott's novels, one of the characters, a royalist, is 
described as having died from the excitement of the joy occa- 
sioned by his meeting Charles II. on his restoration. Who was the 
character, and in what novel is the incident told? 

5. What heroine of Scott's was it who refused marriage because 
her interest was in the restoration of the Stuarts, and also encour- 
aged her brother in an undertaking that led to his execution? 

6. What play founded upon one of Scott's novels was acted with 
great success by Charlotte Cushman and also by Mme. Janauschek? 
What character in this play did these actresses take? 

7. In one of Scott's novels a character, "a descendant of a 
German printer," is represented as having trained his maiden sister 
and his niece to consider him, so to speak, " the greatest man on 
earth." Who was this character? and what is the novel in which 
the character appears ? 

8. What character in the novels is represented as having devoted 
his life to the renovation of the gravestones of the martyrs of the 
Covenant? 

9. In what novel of Scott's, and in what character of the novel, 
is given a picture of sisterly devotion said to be even nobler than 
that of George Meredith's " Rhoda Fleming"? 

ID. What novel of Scott's forms the basis of a well-known Italian 
opera? What incident in the novel is reminiscent of Ophelia? 

170 



SCOTT— QUERIES AND ANSWERS. 171 

11. Who was the soldier of fortune in Scott's novels, that, when 
visited in prison by the lord of the castle, recognized the lord's dis- 
guise, throttled him, and forced him to give the password, and so 
escaped? 

12. What king is it, in one of Scotfs works, whose character, 
subtle and superstitious, is frequently said to be Henry Irving's 
greatest impersonation? 

13. In one of Scott's works a beautiful girl is represented as hav- 
ing been walled up alive. Who was the girl? and in what work is 
her sad history related? 

14. In what book is it described how a famous dwarf hides in a 
cello case, and informs a king of treachery? 

15. Who said the following words, and under what circumstances 
were they said ? — " Mourn not for me, but care for your own safety. 

I die in mins armor as a should, and I die pitied by Mary 

Stuart." 

16. What famous beauty was it who, when condemned to die at 
the stake, expressed her gratitude to her deliverer's wife by giving 
her a casket of diamonds? 

17. In what book of Scott's do we have a picture of an Eliza- 
bethan entertainment? What three queen's favorites are described 
in the book? And with what sweet girl, now buried at St. Mary's, 
Oxford, was connected the sad tragedy whose history the book 
relates ? 

18. What famous child was once Walter Scott's pet and delight, 
whom he used to carry to his home through the "angry airt," 
shielding her in his plaid? 

19. What curious instance of the popularity of " Marmion " is 
recorded ? 

20. What novel gives a picture of a king liberated from prison by 
means of a loved melody sung outside? 



ANSWERS. 

(i) " Muckle-Mouth Meg." And this ancestor of Scott's trans- 
mitted a distinct trace of her large mouth to her descendant, who 
used it, however, to advantage as the spokesman of his race. (2) 
When Camp died, Scott refused a dinner invitation previously ac- 
cepted, saying that "the death of an old friend" prevented his 



172 LITER A TURE. 

coming. For Maida he built a marble monument. (3) *' Mar- 
mion," a story of the battle of Flodden. (4) Sir Henry Lee, in 
*' Woodstock." (5) Flora Maclvor, in " Waverley," a story which 
relates to the insurrection in the Stuart interest led by Charles 
Edward in 1745. (6) " Guy Mannering." The role was that of 
Meg Merrilies, a weird gypsy, akin to the witches of " Mac- 
beth." (7) Jonathan Oldbuck in "The Antiquary," who boasted 
that these two women were the only ones he had ever seen " well 
broken and bitted to obedience." (8) Robert Patterson, or " Old 
Mortality," whose white pony fed among the tombs while his mas- 
ter was engaged in his labors. (9) "The Heart of Midlothian," 
whose interest centres upon the heroic efforts of Jeanie Deans 
to procure the pardon of her sister Effie. (10) "The Bride of 
Lammermoor." Lucy Ashton, the beautiful heroine, goes mad 
from unhappy love, and a tragedy follows. " Lucia de Lammer- 
moor" is the opera, (ri) Dugald Dalgetty, in "The Legend of 
Montrose," a second Falstaff, who boasted of his adventures under 
Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the North. (12) Louis XL in 
" Quentin Durward." (13) Constance de Beverly, in " Marmion," 
an escaped nun, who received the doom of death as her punish- 
ment for broken vows. (14) Sir Humphry Davy, in " Peveril of 
the Peak." He was a favorite of Henrietta Maria. (15) George 
Douglas, in "The Abbot." He had assisted the queen to escape. 
(16) Rebecca, the Jewess, in " Ivanhoe"; and to Ivanhoe's wife, 
the Saxon Rowena, were given the jewels. (17) In " Kenilvvorth." 
Earls of Leicester and Sussex and Sir Walter Raleigh. Amy Rob- 
sart. (18) Marjorie Fleming, who at seven years of age used to sit 
on Scott's stout shoulder and recite Shakespeare — a most preco- 
cious and interesting child. A year later she died. A delightful 
account of her is given in the Little Classics — " Childhood." (19) 
Two old men, entire strangers, were passing one another on a dark 
London night. One happened to be repeating to himself, " Charge, 
Chester, charge ! " when suddenly a reply came out of the darkness, 
" On, Stanley, on ! " whereupon they finished the death of Marmion 
together, took off their hats to each other, and parted, laughing. 
(20) "The Talisman" gives a picture of Richard the Lion-Hearted 
being found in prison by his minstrel Blondel. 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. 



SUNSET IN A STORM. 

The sun was now resting his huge disk upon the edge 
of the level ocean, and gilded the accumulation of tow- 
ering clouds through which he had travelled the livelong 
day, and which now assembled on all sides, like mis- 
fortunes and disasters around a sinking empire and 
falling monarch. Still, however, his dying splendor gave 
a sombre magnificence to the massive congregation of 
vapors, forming out of their unsubstantial gloom the 
show of pyramids and towers, some touched with gold, 
some with purple, some with a hue of deep and dark red. 
The distant sea, stretched beneath this varied and gor- 
geous canopy, lay almost portentously still, reflecting 
back the dazzling and level beams of the descending 
luminary, and the splendid coloring of the clouds amidst 
which he was setting. Nearer to the beach the tide 
rippled onward in waves of sparkling silver, that imper- 
ceptibly, yet rapidly, gained upon the sand. 

With a mind employed in admiration of the romantic 
scene, or perhaps on some more agitating topic. Miss 
Wardour advanced in silence by her father's side, whose 
recently offended dignity did not stoop to open any con- 
versation. Following the windings of the beach, they 
passed one projecting point, or headland of rock, after 



I 74 LITER A TURK. 

another, and now found themselves under a huge and 
continued extent of the precipices by which that iron- 
bound coast is in most places defended. Long project- 
ing reefs of rock, extending under water, and only 
evincing their existence by here and there a peak entirely 
bare, or by the breakers which foamed over those that 
were partially covered, rendered Knockwinnock Bay 
dreaded by pilots and shipmasters. The crags which 
rose between the beach and the mainland, to the height 
of two or three hundred feet, afforded in their crevices 
shelter for unnumbered sea-fowl, in situations seemingly 
secured by their dizzy height from the rapacity of man. 
Many of these wild tribes, with the instinct which sends 
them to seek the land before a storm arises, were now 
winging towards their nests with the shrill and dissonant 
clang which announces disquietude and fear. The disk 
of the sun became almost totally obscured ere he had 
altogether sunk below the horizon, and an early and 
lurid shade of darkness blotted the serene twilight of a 
summer evening. The wind began next to arise ; but 
its wild and moanino- sound was heard for some time, 
and its effects became visible on the bosom of the sea, 
before the gale was felt on shore. The mass of waters, 
now dark and threatening, began to lift itself in larger 
ridges, and sink in deeper furrows, forming waves that 
rose high in foam upon the breakers, or burst upon the 
beach with a sound resembling distant thunder. — From 
*' The Antiquary y 

THE DISCOVERY OF THE TOMB OF ROBERT THE BRUCE. 

Such of the Scottish knights as remained alive re- 
turned to their own country. They brought back the 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. 



175 



heart of the Bruce, and the bones of the good Lord 
James. These last were interred in the church of St. 
Bride, where Thomas Dickson and Douglas held so 
terrible a Palm Sunday. The Bruce' s heart was buried 
below the high altar in Melrose Abbey. As for his 
body, it was laid in the sepulchre in the midst of the 
church of Dunfermline, under a marble stone. But the 
church becoming afterwards ruinous, and the roof falling 
down with age, the monument was broken to pieces, and 
nobody could tell where it stood. But a little while 
ago, when they were repairing the church at Dunferm- 
line, and removing the rubbish, lo ! they found frag- 
ments of the marble tomb of Robert Bruce. Then they 
began to dig farther, thinking to discover the body of 
this celebrated monarch ; and at length they came to 
the skeleton of a tall man, and they knew it must be 
that of King Robert, both as he was known to have 
been buried in a winding sheet of cloth of gold, of which 
many fragments were found about this skeleton, and 
also because the breastbone appeared to have been sawn 
through, in order to take out the heart. So orders were 
sent from the King's Court of Exchequer to guard the 
bones carefully, until a new tomb should be prepared, 
into which they were laid with profound respect. A 
great many gentlemen and ladies attended, and almost 
all the common people in the neighborhood ; and as the 
church could not hold half the numbers, the people were 
allowed to pass through it, one after another, that each 
one, the poorest as well as the richest, might see all that 
remained of the great King Robert Bruce, who restored 
the Scottish monarchy. Many people shed tears ; for 
there was the wasted skull which once was the head 



176 



LITER A TURK. 



that thought so wisely and boldly for his country's deliv- 
erance ; and there was the dry bone which had once 
been the sturdy arm that killed Sir Henry de Bohun, 
between the two armies, at a single blow, on the evening 
before the battle of Bannockburn. 

It is more than five hundred years since the body of 
Bruce was first laid into the tomb ; and how many, 




Dryburgh Abbey from the East. 



many millions of men have died since that time, whose 
bones could not be recognized, nor their names known, 
any more than those of inferior animals ! It was a 
great thing to see that the wisdom, courage, and patri- 
otism of a King could preserve him for such a long time 
in the memory of the people over whom he once reigned. 
But then, my dear child, you must remember, that it is 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. I 77 

only desirable to be remembered for praiseworthy and 
patriotic actions, such as those of Robert Bruce. It 
would be better for a prince to be forgotten like the 
meanest peasant, than to be recollected for actions of 
tyranny or oppression. — From "• The Tales of a Grand- 
father. 

THE PRAYER OF LOUIS THE ELEVENTH. 

Above the little door, in memory perhaps of the deed 
which had been done within, was a rude niche contain- 
ing a crucifix cut in stone. Upon this emblem the King 
fixed his eyes, as if about to kneel, but stopped short, 
as if he applied to the blessed image the principles of 
worldly policy, and deemed it rash to approach its pres- 
ence without having secured the private intercession of 
some supposed favorite. He therefore turned from the 
crucifix as unworthy to look upon it, and selecting from 
the images with which, as often mentioned, his hat was 
completely garnished, a representation of the Lady of 
Clery, knelt down before it, and made the following 
extraordinary prayer ; in which, it is to be observed, the 
grossness of his superstition induced him, in some de- 
gree, to consider the Virgin of Clery as a different per- 
son from the Madonna of Embrun, a favorite idol, to 
whom he often paid his vows. 

''Sweet Lady of Clery," he exclaimed, clasping his 
hands and beating his breast while he spoke, " blessed 
Mother of Mercy ! thou who art omnipotent with Om- 
nipotence, have compassion with me a sinner ! It is 
true that I have something neglected thee for thy 
blessed sister of Embrun ; but I am a King, my power 
is great, my wealth boundless ; and, were it otherwise, I 



178 LITERATURE, 

would double the gabelle on my subjects, rather than 
not pay my debts to you both. Undo these iron doors ; 
fill up these tremendous moats ; lead me, as a mother 
leads a child, out of this present and pressing danger ! 
If I have given thy sister the county of Boulogne, to 
be held of her forever, have I no means of showing 
devotion to thee also ? Thou shalt have the broad and 
rich province of Champagne ; and its vineyards shall 
pour their abundance into thy convent. I had prom- 
ised the province to my brother Charles ; but he, thou 
knowest, is dead, — poisoned by that wicked Abbe of 
Saint John d'Angely, whom, if I live, I will punish! — I 
promised this once before, but this time I will keep my 
word. If I had any knowledge of the crime, believe, 
dearest patroness, it was because I knew no better 
method of quieting the discontents of my kingdom. 
O, do not reckon that old debt to my account to-day ; 
but be, as thou hast ever been, kind, benignant, and 
easy to be entreated ! Sweetest Lady, work with thy 
child, that he will pardon all past sins, and one — one 
little deed, which I must do this night — nay, it is no 
sin, dearest Lady of Clery — no sin, but an act of j us- 
tice privately administered ; for the villain is the greatest 
impostor that ever poured falsehood into a Prince's ear, 
and leans besides to the filthy heresy of the Greeks. 
He is not deserving of thy protection ; leave him to my 
care ; and hold it as good service that I rid the world of 
him ; for the man is a necromancer and wizard, that is 
not worth thy thought and care, — a dog, the extinction 
of whose life ought to be of as little consequence in 
thine eyes as the treading out a spark that drops from a 
lamp, or springs from a fire. Think not of this little 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. I 79 

matter, gentlest, kindest Lady, but only consider how 
thou canst best aid me in my troubles ! And I here 
bind my royal signet to thy effigy, in token that I will 
keep word concerning the county of Champagne, and 
that this shall be the last time I will trouble thee in 
affairs of blood, knowing thou art so kind, so gentle, 
and so tender-hearted." 

After this extraordinary contract with the object of his 
adoration, Louis recited, apparently with deep devotion, 
the seven penitential psalms in Latin, and several aves 
and prayers especially belonging to the service of the 
Virgin. He then arose, satisfied that he had secured 
the intercession of the Saint to whom he had prayed, 
the rather, as he craftily reflected, that most of the sins 
for which he had requested her mediation on former 
occasions had been of a different character, and that, 
therefore, the Lady of Clery was less likely to consider 
him as a hardened and habitual shedder of blood, than 
the other saints whom he had more frequently made 
confidants of his crimes in that respect. — From '' Quen- 
tin Durivardy 

BEFORE THE READING OF THE WILL. 

At the appointed hour, Mannering went to a small 
house in the suburbs to the southward of the city, where 
he found the place of mourning, indicated, as usual in 
Scotland, by two rueful figures with long black cloaks, 
white crapes and hat-bands, holding in their hands poles, 
adorned with melancholy streamers of the same descrip- 
tion. By two other mutes, who, from their visages, 
seemed suffering under the pressure of some strange 



i8o 



LIT ERA TURE. 



calamity, he was ushered into the dining-parlor of the 
defunct, where the company were assembled for the 
funeral. 

In Scotland, the custom, now disused in England, of 
inviting the relations of the deceased to the interment, is 




Scott's Monument at Edinburgh. 



universally retained. On many occasions this has a 
singular and striking effect ; but it degenerates into 
mere empty form and grimace in cases where the 
defunct has had the misfortune to live unbeloved and 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. l8l 

die unlamented. The English service for the dead, 
one of the most beautiful and impressive parts of the 
ritual of the church, would have, in such cases, the 
effect of fixing the attention, and uniting the thoughts 
and feelings of the audience present, in an exercise of 
devotion so peculiarly adapted to such an occasion. 
But, according to the Scottish custom, if there be not 
real feeling among the assistants, ^here is nothing to 
supply the deficiency, and exalt or rouse the attention ; 
so that a sense of tedious form, and almost hypocritical 
restraint, is too apt to pervade the company assembled 
for the mournful solemnity. Mrs. Margaret Bertram 
was unluckily one of those whose good qualities had 
attached no general friendship. She had no near rela- 
tions who might have mourned from natural affection, 
and therefore her funeral exhibited merely the exterior 
trappings of sorrow. 

Mannering, therefore, stood among this lugubrious 
company of cousins in the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth 
degree, composing his countenance to the decent solem- 
nity of all who were around him, and looking as much 
concerned on Mrs. Margaret Bertram's account as if 
the deceased lady of Singleside had been his own sister 
or mother. After a deep and awful pause, the company 
began to talk aside, — under their breaths, however, and 
as if in the chamber of a dying person. 

'' Our poor friend," said one grave gentleman, scarcely 
opening his mouth, for fear of deranging the necessary 
solemnity of his features, and sliding his whisper from 
between his lips, which were as little unclosed as pos- 
sible, — '' Our poor friend has died well to pass in the 
world." 



1 82 LITERATURE. 

"■ Nae doubt," answered the person addressed, with 
half-closed eyes ; '* poor Mrs. Margaret was aye careful 
of the gear." 

''Any news to-day, Colonel Mannering .^ " said one of 
the gentlemen whom he had dined with the day before, 
but in a tone which might, for its impressive gravity, 
have communicated the death of his whole generation. 

*' Nothing particular, I believe, sir," said Mannering, 
in the cadence which was, he observed, appropriate to 
the house of mourning. 

''I understand," continued the first speaker emphat- 
ically, and with the air of one who is well informed — 
'' I understand there is a settlement." 

''And what does little Jenny Gibson get } " 

"A hundred, and the auld repeater." 

" That 's but sma' gear, puir thing ; she had a sair 
time o't with the auld leddy. But it 's ill waiting for 
dead folk's shoon." 

" I am afraid," said the politician, who was close by 
Mannering, " we have not done with your old friend 
Tippoo Saib yet, — I doubt he '11 give the Company more 
plague ; and I am told — but you '11 know for certain — 
that East India Stock is not rising." 

" I trust it will, sir, soon." 

"Mrs. Margaret," said another person, mingling in 
the conversation, " had some India bonds. I know that, 
for I drew the interest for her — it would be desirable 
now for the trustees and legatees to have the colonel's 
advice about the time and mode of converting them into 
money. For my part I think — But there 's Mr. Mort- 
cloke to tell us they are gaun to lift." 

Mr. Mortcloke the undertaker did accordingly, with a 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. 183 

visage of professional length and most grievous solem- 
nity, distribute among the pall-bearers little cards, as- 
signing their respective situations in attendance upon 
the coffin. As this precedent is supposed to be regu- 
lated by propinquity to the defunct the undertaker, 
however skilful a master of these lugubrious ceremonies, 
did not escape giving some offence. To be related to 
Mrs. Bertram was to be of kin to the lands of Single- 
side, and was a propinquity of which each relative pres- 
ent at that moment was particularly jealous. Some 
murmurs there were on the occasion ; and our friend 
Dinmont gave more open offence, being unable either to 
repress his discontent, or to utter it in the key properly 
modulated to the solemnity. '^ I think ye might hae at 
least gi'en me a leg o' her to carry," he exclaimed, in 
a voice considerably louder than propriety admitted ; 
'' God ! an it hadna been for the rigs o' land, I would 
hae gotten her a' to carry mysell, for as mony gentles 
as are here." 

A score of frowning and reproving brows were bent 
upon the unappalled yeoman, who, having given vent to 
his displeasure, stalked sturdily down-stairs with the rest 
of the company, totally disregarding the censures of 
those whom his remarks had scandalized. 

And then the funeral pomp set forth ; saulies with 
their batons, and gumphions of tarnished white crape, 
in honor of the well-preserved maiden fame of Mrs. 
Margaret Bertram. Six starved horses, themselves the 
very emblems of mortality, well cloaked and plumed, 
lugging along the hearse with its dismal emblazonry, 
crept in slow state towards the place of interment, pre- 
ceded by Jamie Duff, an idiot, who, with weepers and 



184 LITERATURE. 

cravat made of white paper, attended on every funeral, 
and followed by six mourning coaches, filled with the 
company. Many of these now gave more free loose to 
their tongues and discussed with unrestrained earnest- 
ness, the amount of the succession, and the probability 
of its destination. The principal expectants, however, 
kept a prudent silence, indeed, ashamed to express hopes 
which might prove fallacious ; and the agent, or man of 
business, who alone knew exactly how matters stood, 
maintained a countenance of mysterious importance, as 
if determined to preserve the full interest of anxiety and 
suspense. 

At length they arrived at the churchyard gates ; and 
from thence, amid the gaping of two or three dozen 
of idle women with infants in their arms, and accom- 
panied by some twenty children, who ran gambolling 
and screaming alongside of the sable procession, they 
finally arrived at the burial-place of the Singleside fam- 
ily. This was a square enclosure in the Greyfriars' 
churchyard, guarded on one side by a veteran angel, 
without a nose, and having only one wing, who had the 
merit of having maintained his post for a century, while 
his comrade cherub, who had stood sentinel on the 
corresponding pedestal, lay a broken trunk among the 
hemlock, burdock, and nettles, which grew in gigantic 
luxuriance around the walls of the mausoleum. A moss- 
grown and broken inscription informed the reader that 
in the year 1650 Captain Andrew Bertram, first of 
Singleside, descended of the very ancient and honorable 
house of Ellangowan, had caused this monument to be 
erected for himself and his descendants. . . . 

Here then, amid the deep black fat loam into which 




Sir Walter Scott. 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. 1 87 

her ancestors were now resolved, they deposited the 
body of Mrs. Margaret Bertram ; and, like soldiers re- 
turning from a military funeral, the nearest relations, 
who might be interested in the settlements of the lady, 
urged the dog-cattle of the hackney coaches to all the 
speed of which they were capable, in order to put an 
end to farther suspense on that interesting topic. — 
From '' Guy Manneriiigy 

THE fisherman's FUNERAL. 

The Antiquary, being now alone, hastened his pace, 
which had been retarded by these various discussions, 
and the rencontre which had closed them, and soon ar- 
rived before the half-dozen cottages at Mussel-crag. 
They had now, in addition to their usual squalid and 
uncomfortable appearance, the melancholy attributes of 
the house of mourning. The boats were all drawn up 
on the beach ; and, though the day was fine, and the 
season favorable, the chant, which is used by the fishers 
when at sea, was silent, as well as the prattle of the 
children, and the shrill song of the mother as she sits 
mending her nets by the door. A few of the neighbors, 
some in their antique and well-saved suits of black, 
others in their ordinary clothes, but all bearing an ex- 
pression of mournful sympathy with distress so sudden 
and unexpected, stood gathered around the door of 
Mucklebackit's cottage, waiting till " the body was lift- 
ed." As the Laird of Monkbarns approached, they 
made way for him to enter, doffing their hats and bon- 
nets as he passed, with an air of melancholy courtesy ; 
and he returned their salutes in the same manner. 



1 88 LITERATURE. 

In the inside of the cottage . was a scene which our 
Wilkie alone could have painted with that exquisite feel- 
ing of nature that characterizes his enchanting pro- 
ductions. 

The body was laid in its cofifin within the wooden 
bedstead which the young fisher had occupied while 
alive. At a little distance stood the father, whose rug- 
ged weather-beaten countenance, shaded by his grizzled 
hair, had faced many a stormy night and night-like day. 
He was apparently revolving his loss in his mind with 
that strong feeling of painful grief, peculiar to harsh 
and rough characters, which almost breaks forth into 
hatred against the world, and all that remain in it, after 
the beloved object is withdrawn. The old man had 
made the most desperate efforts to save his son, and had 
only been withheld by main force from renewing them 
at a moment, when, without the possibility of assisting 
the sufferer, he must himself have perished. All this 
apparently was boiling in his recollection. His glance 
was directed sidelong towards the coffin, as to an object 
on which he could not steadfastly look, and yet from 
which he could not withdraw his eyes. His answers to 
the necessary questions which were occasionally put to 
him were brief, harsh, and almost fierce. His family 
had not yet dared to address to him a word, either of 
sympathy or consolation. His masculine wife, virago as 
she was and absolute mistress of the family, as she 
justly boasted herself, on all ordinary occasions, was, by 
this great loss, terrified into silence and submission, and 
compelled to hide from her husband's observation the 
bursts of her female sorrow. As he had rejected food 
ever since the disaster had happened, not daring herself 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. igg 

to approach him, she had that morning, with affectionate 
artifice, employed the youngest and favorite child to 
present her husband with some nourishment. His first 
action was to put it from him with an angry violence 
that frightened the child; his next, to snatch up the 
boy, and devour him with kisses. '' Ye '11 be a bra' fal- 
low, an ye be spared, Patie, — but ye '11 never — never 
can be — what he was to me ! — He has sailed the coble 
wi' me since he was ten years auld, and there wasna the 
like o' him drew a net betwixt this and Buchanness. — 
They say folks maun submit — I will try." 

And he had been silent from that moment until com- 
pelled to answer the necessary questions we have already 
noticed. Such was the disconsolate state of the father. 

In another corner of the cottage, her face covered by 
her apron which was flung over it, sat the mother, — 
the nature of her grief sufficiently indicated by the 
wringing of her hands and the convulsive agitation of 
the bosom which the covering could not conceal. Two 
of her gossips, officiously whispering into her ear the 
commonplace topic of resignation under irremediable 
misfortune, seemed as if they were endeavoring to stun 
the grief which they could not console. 

The sorrow of the children was mingled with wonder 
at the preparations they beheld around them, and at the 
unusual display of wheaten bread and wine, which the 
poorest peasant, or fisher, ofters to the guests on these 
mournful occasions ; and thus their grief for their broth- 
er's death was almost already lost in admiration of the 
splendor of his funeral. 

But the figure of the old grandmother was the most 
remarkable of the sorrowing group. Seated on her 



190 



LITER A TURE. 



accustomed chair, with her usual air of apathy and want 
of interest in what surrounded her, she seemed every 
now and then mechanically to resume the motion of 
twirling her spindle ; then to look towards her bosom 
for the distaff, although both had been laid aside. She 
would then cast her eyes about as if surprised at miss- 
ing the usual implements of her industry, and appear 
struck by the black color of the gown in which they 
had dressed her, and embarrassed by the number of 
persons by whom she was surrounded. Then, finally, 
she would raise her head with a ghastly look, and fix 
her eyes upon the bed which contained the coffin of her 
grandson, as if she had at once, and for the first time, 
acquired sense to comprehend her inexpressible calamity. 
These alternate feelings of embarrassment, wonder, and 
grief, seemed to succeed each other more than once 
upon her torpid features. But she spoke not a word, — 
neither had she shed a tear, — nor did one of the family 
understand, either from look or expression, to what ex- 
tent she comprehended the uncommon bustle around 
her. Thus she sat among the funeral assembly like a 
connecting-link between the surviving mourners and the 
dead corpse which they bewailed, — a being in whom 
the light of existence was already obscured by the en- 
croaching shadows of death. . . . 

To return from a 'digression which can only serve to 
introduce the honest clergyman more particularly to our 
readers, Mr. Blattergowl had no sooner entered the hut, 
and received the mute and melancholy salutations of 
the company whom it contained than he edged himself 
towards the unfortunate father, and seemed to endeavor 
to slide in a few words of condolence or of consolation. 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. 19I 

But the old man was incapable as yet of receiving 
either ; he nodded, however, gruffly, and shook the 
clergyman's hand in acknowledgment of his good inten- 
tions, but was either unable or unwilling to make any 
verbal reply. 

The minister next passed to the mother, moving along 
the floor as slowly, silently, and gradually, as if he had 
been afraid that the ground would, like unsafe ice, break 
beneath his feet, or that the first echo of a footstep was 
to dissolve some magic spell, and plunge the hut, with all 
its inmates, into a subterranean abyss. The tenor of 
what he had said to the poor woman could only be judged 
by her answers, as, half-stifled by sobs ill-repressed, and 
by the covering which she still kept over her counte- 
nance, she faintly answered at each pause in his speech — 
'' Yes, sir, yes ! — Ye 're very gude — ye 're very gude ! — 
Nae doubt, nae doubt ! — It's our duty to submit ! — But, 
O dear ! my poor Steenie ! the pride o' my very heart, 
that was sae handsome and comely, and a help to his 
family, and a comfort to us a', and a pleasure to a' that 
lookit on him ! — Oh, my bairn ! my bairn ! my bairn ! 
what for is thou lying there ! — and eh ! what for am I 
left to greet for ye! " 

There was no contending with this burst of sorrow 
and natural affection. Oldbuck had repeated recourse 
to his snuff-box to conceal the tears which, despite his 
shrewd and caustic temper, were apt to start on such oc- 
casions. The female assistants whimpered, the men held 
their bonnets to their faces, and spoke apart with each 
other. The clergyman, meantime, addressed his ghostly 
consolation to the aged grandmother. At first she 
listened, or seemed to listen, to what he said, with the 



192 LITERATURE. 

apathy of her usual unconsciousness. But as, in press- 
ing this theme, he approached so near to her ear, that 
the sense of his words became distinctly intelligible to 
her, though unheard by those who stood more distant, 
her countenance at once assumed that stern and expres- 
sive cast which characterized her intervals of intelligence. 
She drew up her head and body, shook her head in a 
manner that showed at least impatience, if not scorn of 
his counsel, and waved her hand slightly, but with a 
gesture so expressive, as to indicate to all who witnessed 
it a marked and disdainful rejection of the ghostly con- 
solation proffered to her. The minister stepped back as 
if repulsed, and, by lifting gently and dropping his hand, 
seemed to show at once wonder, sorrow, and compassion 
for her dreadful state of mind. The rest of the company 
sympathized, and a stifled whisper went through them, 
indicating how much her desperate and determined man- 
ner impressed them with awe and even horror. . . . 

The coffin, covered with a pall, and supported upon 
handspikes by the nearest relatives, now only waited the 
father to support the head, as is customary. Two or 
three of these privileged persons spoke to him, but he 
only answered by shaking his hands and his head in 
token of refusal. With better intention than judgment, 
the friends, who considered this as an act of duty on the 
part of the living, and of decency towards the deceased, 
would have proceeded to enforce their request, had not 
Oldbuck interfered between the distressed father and 
his well-meaning tormentors, and informed them, that he 
himself, as landlord and master to the deceased, '' would 
carry his head to the grave." In spite of the sorrowful 
occasion, the hearts of the relatives swelled within them 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. 



93 



at so marked a distinction on the part of the laird ; and 
old Alison Breck, who was present among other fish- 
women, swore almost aloud, ''His honor Monkbarns 
should never want sax warp of oysters in the season (of 
which fish he was understood to be fond), if she should 
gang to sea and dredge for them hersell in the foulest 
wind that ever blew." And such is the temper of the 
Scottish common people, that, by this instance of com- 
pliance w4th their customs, and respect for their persons, 
Mr. Oldbuck gained more popularity than by all the 
sums which he had yearly distributed in the parish for 
purposes of private or general charity. 

The sad procession now moved slowly forward, pre- 
ceded by the beadles, or saulies, with their batons, — 
miserable-looking old men, tottering as if on the edge 
of that grave to which they were marshalling another, 
and clad, according to Scottish guise, with threadbare 
black coats, and hunting-caps, decorated with rusty 
crape. Monkbarns would probably have remonstrated 
against this superfluous expense, had he been consulted ; 
but, in doing so, he would have given more offence than 
he gained popularity by condescending to perform the 
office of chief mourner. Of this he was quite aware, 
and wisely withheld rebuke, where rebuke and advice 
would have been equally unavailing. In truth, the 
Scottish peasantry are still infected with that rage for 
funeral ceremonial, which once distinguished the gran- 
dees of the kingdom so much, that a sumptuary law 
was made by the Parliament of Scotland for the pur- 
pose of restraining it ; and I have known many in the 
lowest stations, who have denied themselves not merely 
the comforts, but almost the necessaries of life, in order 



194 



LITER A TURE. 



to save such a sum of money as might enable their 
surviving friends to bury them hke Christians, as they 
termed it ; nor could their faithful executors be pre- 
vailed upon, though equally necessitous, to turn to the 
use and maintenance of the living, the money vainly 
wasted upon the interment of the dead. 

The procession to the churchyard, at about half-a- 
mile's distance, was made with the mournful solemnity 
usual on these occasions, — the body was consigned to 
its parent earth, — and when the labor of the grave- 
diggers had filled up the trench, and covered it with 
fresh sod, Mr. Oldbuck, taking his hat off, saluted the 
assistants, who had stood by in melancholy silence, and 
with that adieu dispersed the mourners. . . . 

The coffin had been borne from the place where it 
rested. The mourners, in regular gradation, according 
to their rank or their relationship to the deceased, had 
filed from the cottage, while the younger male children 
were led along to totter after the bier of their brother, 
and to view with wonder a ceremonial which they could 
hardly comprehend. The female gossips next rose to 
depart, and, with consideration for the situation of the 
parents, carried along with them the girls of the family, 
to give the unhappy pair time and opportunity to open 
their hearts to each other, and soften their grief by 
communicating it. But their kind intention was with- 
out effect. The last of them had darkened the entrance 
of the cottage, as she went out, and drawn the door 
softly behind her, when the father, first ascertaining by 
a hasty glance that no stranger remained, started up, 
clasped his hands wildly above his head, uttered a cry of 
the despair which he had hitherto repressed, and, in all 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. 1 95 

the impotent impatience of grief, half rushed half stag- 
gered forward to the bed on which the coffin had been 
deposited, threw himself down upon it, and smothering, 
as it were, his head among the bed-clothes, gave vent 
to the full passion of his sorrow. It was in vain that 
the wretched mother, terrified by the vehemence of her 
husband's affliction — affliction still more fearful as agi- 
tating a man of hardened manners and a robust frame 

suppressed her own sobs and tears, and, pulling him 

by the skirts of his coat, implored him to rise and re- 
member, that, though one was removed, he had still a 
wife and children to comfort and support. The appeal 
came at too early a period of his anguish, and was 
totally unattended to ; he continued to remain prostrate, 
indicating, by sobs so bitter and violent that they 
shook the bed and partition against which it rested, by 
clenched hands which grasped the bed-clothes, and by 
the vehement and convulsive motion of his legs, how 
deep and how terrible was the agony of a father's 
sorrow. 

" O, what a day is this ! what a day is this ! " said the 
poor mother, her womanish affliction already exhausted 
by sobs and tears, and now almost lost in terror for the 
state in which she beheld her husband— '^O, what an 
hour is this ! and naebody to help a poor lone woman — 
O, gudemither, could ye but speak a word to him! — 
wad ye but bid him be comforted! " 

To her astonishment, and even to the increase of her 
fear, her husband's mother heard and answered the ap- 
peal. She rose and walked across the floor without sup- 
port, and without much apparent feebleness, and stand- 
ing by the bed on which her son had extended himself, 



196 LITERATURE. 

she said, '' Rise up, my son, and sorrow not for him that 
is beyond sin and sorrow and temptation. Sorrow is for 
those that remain in this vale of sorrow and darkness 
— I, wha dinna sorrow, and wha canna sorrow for ony 
ane, hae maist need. that ye should a' sorrow for me." 

The voice of his mother, not heard for years as taking 
part in the active duties of life, or offering advice or 
consolation, produced its effect upon her son. He as- 
sumed a sitting posture on the side of the bed, and his 
appearance, attitude, and gestures, changed from those 
of angry despair to deep grief and dejection. The 
grandmother retired to her nook, the mother mechan- 
ically took in her hand her tattered Bible, and seemed 
to read, though her eyes were drowned with tears. — 
From " TJie Antiqicaryy 

THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF FERGUS MAC-IVOR. 

Edward, attended by his former servant Alick Pol- 
warth who had re-entered his service at Edinburgh, 
reached Carlisle while the commission of Oyer and Ter- 
miner on his unfortunate associates was yet sitting. He 
had pushed forward in haste, — not, alas ! with the most 
distant hope of saving Fergus, but to see him for the 
last time. I ought to have mentioned, that he had fur- 
nished funds for the defence of the prisoners in the most 
liberal manner, as soon as he heard that the day of trial 
was fixed. A solicitor, and the first counsel, accordingly 
attended ; but it was upon the same footing on which 
the first physicians are usually summoned to the bedside 
of some dying man of rank ; — the doctors to take the 
advantage of some incalculable chance of an exertion of 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. 



197 



nature — the lawyers to avail themselves of the barely 
possible occurrence of some legal flaw. Edward pressed 
into the court, which was extremely crowded ; but by 
his arriving from the north, and his extreme eagerness 
and agitation, it was supposed he was a relation of the 
prisoners, and people made way for him. It was the 
third sitting of the court, and there were two men at 
the bar. The verdict of Guilty was already pronounced. 
Edward just glanced at the bar during the momentous 
pause which ensued. There was no mistaking the 
stately form and noble features of Fergus Mac-Ivor, 
although his dress was squalid, and his countenance 
tinged with the sickly yellow hue of long and close im- 
prisonment. By his side was Evan Maccombich. Ed- 
ward felt sick and dizzy as he gazed on them ; but he 
was recalled to himself as the Clerk of Arraigns pro- 
nounced the solemn words : '^ Fergus Mac-Ivor of Glen- 
naquoich, otherwise called Vich Ian Vohr, and Evan 
Mac-Ivor, in the Dhu of Tarrascleugh, otherwise called 
Evan Dhu, otherwise called Evan Maccombich, or Evan 
Dhu Maccombich — you, and each of you, stand at- 
tainted of high treason. What have you to say for 
yourselves why the Court should not pronounce judg- 
ment against you, that you die according to law .? " 

Fergus, as the presiding Judge was putting on the 
fatal cap of judgment, placed his own bonnet upon his 
head, regarded him with a steadfast and stern look, and 
replied in a firm voice, " I cannot let this numerous audi- 
ence suppose that to such an appeal I have no answer 
to make. But what I have to say, you would not bear 
to hear, for my defence would be your condemnation. 
Proceed, then, in the name of God, to do what is per- 



198 LITERATURE. 

mitted to you. Yesterday, and the day before, you have 
condemned loyal and honorable blood to be poured forth 
like water. Spare not mine. Were that of all my 
ancestors in my veins, I would have perilled it in this 
quarrel." He resumed his seat, and refused again to 
rise. 

Evan Maccombich looked at him with great earnest- 
ness, and, rising up, seemed anxious to speak ; but the 
confusion of the court, and the perplexity arising from 
thinking in a language different from that in which he 
was to express himself, kept him silent. There was a 
murmur of compassion among the spectators, from the 
idea that the poor fellow intended to plead the influence 
of his superior as an excuse for his crime. The Judge 
commanded silence, and encouraged Evan to proceed. 

<' I was only ganging to say, my Lord," said Evan, in 
what he meant to be an insinuating manner, "■ that if 
your excellent honor, and the honorable Court, would 
let Vich Ian Vohr go free just this once, and let him 
gae back to France, and no to trouble King George's 
government again, that ony six o' the very best of his 
clan will be willing to be justified in his stead ; and if 
you '11 just let me gae down to Glennaquoich, I '11 fetch 
them up to ye myself, to head or hang, and you may 
begin wi' me the very first man." 

Notwithstanding the solemnity of the occasion, a sort 
of laugh was heard in the court at the extraordinary 
nature of the proposal. The Judge checked this inde- 
cency, and Evan, looking sternly around, when the mur- 
mur abated, '' If the Saxon gentlemen are laughing," he 
said, '' because a poor man, such as me, thinks my life, 
or the life of six of my degree, is worth that of Vich 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. 1 99 

Ian Vohr, it 's like enough they may be very right ; but 
if they laugh because they think I would not keep my 
word, and come back to redeem him, I can tell them 
they ken neither the heart of a Hielandman, nor the 
honor of a gentleman." 

There was no further inclination to laugh among the 
audience, and a dead silence ensued. 

The Judge then pronounced upon both prisoners the 
sentence of the law of high treason, with all its horrible 
accompaniments. The execution was appointed for the 
ensuing day. " For you, Fergus MacTvor," continued 
the Judge, '' I can hold out no hope of mercy. You 
must prepare against to-morrow for your last sufferings 
here, and your great audit hereafter." 

" I desire nothing else, my lord," answered Fergus, in 
the same manly and firm tone. 

The hard eyes of Evan, which had been perpetually 
bent on his Chief, were moistened with a tear. '< For 
you, poor ignorant man," continued the Judge, ''who, 
following the ideas in which you have been educated, 
have this day given us a striking example how the loy- 
alty due to the king and state alone, is, from your un- 
happy ideas of clanship, transferred to some ambitious 
individual, who ends by making you the tool of his 
crimes — for you, I say, I feel so much compassion, that 
if you can make up your mind to petition for grace, I 
will endeavor to procure it for you. Otherwise " 

'' Grace me no grace," said Evan ; " since you are to 
shed Vich Ian Vohr's blood, the only favor I would 
accept from you, is — to bid them loose my hands and 
gie me my claymore, and bide you just a minute sitting 
where you are ! " 



200 LITERATURE. 

"Remove the prisoners," said the Judge; "his blood 
be upon his own head." . . . 

The place of Fergus' confinement was a gloomy and 
vaulted apartment in the central part of the Castle — a 
huge old tower, supposed to be of great antiquity, and 
surrounded by outworks, seemingly of Henry VIII's 
time, or somewhat later. The grating of the large old- 
fashioned bars and bolts, withdrawn for the purpose of 
admitting Edward, was answered by the clash of chains, 
as the unfortunate Chieftain, strongly and heavily fet- 
tered, shuffled along the stone floor of his prison to fling 
himself into his friend's arms. . . . 

Soon after, a file of soldiers entered with a black- 
smith, who struck the fetters from the legs of the 
prisoners. 

" You see the compliment they pay to our Highland 
strength and courage — we have lain chained here like 
wild beasts, till our legs are cramped into palsy, and 
when they free us, they send six soldiers with loaded 
muskets to prevent our taking the castle by storm ! " 

Edward afterwards learned that these severe precau- 
tions had been taken in consequence of a desperate 
attempt of the prisoners to escape, in which they had 
very nearly succeeded. 

Shortly afterwards the drums of the garrison beat to 
arms. "This is the last turn out," said Fergus, "that I 
shall hear and obey." . . . 

" We part not Jiere ! " said Waverley. 

" O yes, we do ; you must come no farther. Not that 
I fear what is to follow for myself," he said proudly: 
" Nature has her tortures as well as art ; and how happy 
should we think the man who escapes from the throes 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. 20I 

of a mortal and painful disorder, in the space of a short 
half hour ? And this matter, spin it out as they will, 
cannot last longer. But what a dying man can suffer 
firmly, may kill a living friend to look upon. This same 
law of high treason," he continued, with astonishing 
firmness and composure, ^' is one of the blessings, Ed- 
ward, with which your free country has accommodated 
poor old Scotland : her own jurisprudence, as I have 
heard, was much milder. But I suppose one day or 
other — when there are no longer any wild Highlanders 
to benefit by its tender mercies — they will blot it from 
their records, as levelling them with a nation of canni- 
bals. The mummery, too, of exposing the senseless 
head — they have not the wit to grace mine with a 
paper coronet ; there would be some satire in that, 
Edward. I hope they will set it on the Scotch gate 
though, that I may look, even after death, to the blue 
hills of my own country, which I love so dearly." . . . 
An officer now appeared, and intimated that the High 
Sheriff and his attendants waited before the gate of the 
Castle, to claim the bodies of Fergus Mac-Ivor and Evan 
Maccombich. '' I come," said Fergus. Accordingly, 
supporting Edward by the arm, and followed by Evan 
Dhu and the priest, he moved down the stairs of the 
tower, the soldiers bringing up the rear. The court 
was occupied by a squadron of dragoons and a battalion 
of infantry, drawn up in hollow square. Within their 
ranks was the sledge, or hurdle, on which the prisoners 
were to be drawn to the place of execution, about a 
mile distant from Carlisle. It was painted black, and 
drawn by a white horse. At one end of the vehicle sat 
the Executioner, a horrid-looking fellow, as beseemed his 



202 LIT ERA TURK. 

trade, with the broad axe in his hand ; at the other end, 
next the horse, was an empty seat for two persons. 
Through the deep and dark Gothic archway, that opened 
on the drawbridge, were seen on horseback the High 
Sheriff and his attendants, whom the etiquette betwixt 
the civil and mihtary powers did not permit to come 
farther. ''This is well got up for a closing scene," said 
Fergus, smiling disdainfully as he gazed around upon 
the apparatus of terror. Evan Dhu exclaimed with 
some eagerness, after looking at the dragoons, *' These 
are the very chields that galloped off at Gladsmuir, 
before we could kill a dozen o' them. They look bold 
enough now, however." The priest entreated him to be 
silent. 

The sledge now approached, and Fergus, turning 
round, embraced Waverley, kissed him on each side of the 
face, and stepped nimbly into his place. Evan sat down 
by his side. The priest was to follow in a carriage be- 
longing to his patron, the Catholic gentleman at whose 
house Flora resided. As Fergus waved his hand to 
Edward, the ranks closed around the sledge, and the 
whole procession began to move forward. There was a 
momentary stop at the gate-way, while the governor of 
the Castle and the High Sheriff went through a short 
ceremony, the military officer there delivering over the 
persons of the criminals to the civil power. " God save 
King George ! " said the High Sheriff. When the for- 
mality concluded, Fergus stood erect in the sledge, and, 
with a firm and steady voice, replied, '' God save King 
James.''' These were the last words which Waverley 
heard him speak. 

The procession resumed its march, and the sledge 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. 203 

vanished from beneath the portal, under which it had 
stopped for an instant. The dead-march was then 
heard, and its melancholy sounds were mingled with 
those of a muffled peal, tolled from the neighboring 
cathedral. The sound of the military music died away 
as the procession moved on — the sullen clang of the bells 
was soon heard to sound alone. — From '' Waverley'' 



scott's reflections on his own life. 

Abbotsford, 1821. 

In truth, I have long given up poetry. I have had 
my day with the public ; and being no great believer in 
poetical immortality, I was very well pleased to rise a 
winner, without continuing the game, till I was beggared 
of any credit I had acquired. Besides, I felt the prudence 
of giving way before the more forcible and powerful 
genius of Byron. If I were either greedy, or jealous of 
poetical fame — and both are strangers to my nature — 
I might comfort myself with the thought, that I would 
hesitate to strip myself to the contest so fearlessly as 
Byron does ; or to command the wonder and terror of the 
public, by exhibiting, in my own person, the sublime atti- 
tude of the dying gladiator. But with the old frankness 
of twenty years since, I will fairly own, that this same 
delicacy of mine may arise more from conscious want of 
vigor and inferiority, than from a delicate dislike to the 
nature of the conflict. At any rate, there is a time for 
everything, and without swearing oaths to it, I think my 
time for poetry has gone by. . . . 

When I look around me, and consider how many 
changes you will see in feature, form, and fashion, 



204 



LITERA TURE. 



amongst all you knew and loved ; and how much, no 
sudden squall, or violent tempest, but the slow and 
gradual progress of life's long voyage, has severed all 
the gallant fellowships whom you left spreading their 
sails to the morning breeze, I really am not sure that 
you would have much pleasure. 
/ The gay and wild romance of life is over with all of 
\ us. The real, dull, and stern history of humanity has 
I made a far greater progress over our heads ; and age, 
\ dark and unlovely, has laid his crutch over the stoutest 
fellow's shoulders. One thing your old society may 
boast, that they have all run their course with honor, 
and almost all with distinction ; and the brother suppers 
of Frederick Street have certainly made a very consider- 
able figure in the world, as was to be expected, from her 
talents under whose auspices they were assembled. 

One of the most pleasant sights which you would see 

in Scotland, as it now stands, would be your brother 

George in possession of the most beautiful and romantic 

place in Clydesdale — Corehouse. I have promised 

often to go out with him, and assist him with my deep 

experience as a planter and landscape gardener. I 

/ promise you my oaks will outlast my laurels ; and I 

I pique myself more upon my compositions for manure 

than on any other compositions whatsoever to which I 

was ever accessory. But so much does business of one 

^ sort or other engage us both, that we never have been 

able to fix a time which suited us both ; and with the 

utmost wish to make out the party, perhaps we never 

may. 

This is a melancholy letter, but it is chiefly so from 
the sad tone of yours — who have had such real disas- 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. 205 

ters to lament — while mine is only the humorous sad- 
ness, which a retrospect on human life is sure to produce 
in the most prosperous. For my own course of life, I 
have only to be ashamed of its prosperity, and afraid of 
its termination ; for I have little reason, arguing on the 
doctrine of chances, to hope that the same good fortune 
will attend me for ever. I have had an affectionate and 
promising family, many friends, few unfriends, and I 
think, no enemies — and more of fame and fortune than 
mere literature ever procured for a man before. 

I dwell among my own people, and have many whose 
happiness is dependent on me, and which I study to the 
best of my power. I trust my temper, which you know 
is by nature good and easy, has not been spoiled by flat- 
tery or prosperity ; and therefore I have escaped entirely 
that irritability of disposition which I think is planted, 
like the slave, in the poet's chariot, to prevent his enjoy- 
ing his triumph. 

Should things, therefore, change with me — and in 
these times, or indeed in any times, such change is to 
be apprehended — I trust I shall be able to surrender 
these adventitious advantages, as I would my upper 
dress, as something extremely comfortable, but which I 
can make shift to do without. 

Edinburgh, 1825. 

For myself, if things go badly in London, the magic 
wand of the Unknown will be shivered in his grasp. 
He must then, faith, be termed the Too- well-known. 
The feast of fancy will be over with the feeling of inde- 
pendence. He shall no longer have the delight of wak- 
ing in the morning with bright ideas in his mind, hasten 
to commit them to paper, and count them monthly, as 



206 LITER A TURE. 

the means of planting such scaurs, and purchasing such 
wastes ; replacing dreams of fiction by other prospective 
visions of walks by 

" Fountain heads, and pathless groves ; 
Places which pale passion loves." 

This cannot be ; but I may work substantial husbandry, 
i. e., write history, and such concerns. They will not 
be received with the same enthusiasm ; at least I much 
doubt, the general knowledge that an author must write 
for his bread, at least for improving his pittance, de- 
grades him and his productions in the public eye. He 
falls into the second-rate rank of estimation : — 

*' While the harness sore galls, and the spurs his side goad, 
The high-mettled racer \s a hack on the road." 

It is a bitter thought ; but if tears start at it, let them 
flow. My heart clings to the place I have created. 
There is scarce a tree on it that does not owe its being 
to me. 

What a life mine has been ! — half educated, almost 
wholly neglected, or left to myself ; stuffing my head 
with most nonsensical trash, and undervalued by most 
of my companions for a time ; getting forward, and held 
a bold and clever fellow, contrary to the opinion of all 
who thought me a mere dreamer ; broken-hearted for 
two years ; my heart handsomely pieced again ; but the 
crack will remain till my dying day. Rich and poor 
four or five times ; once on the verge of ruin, yet opened 
a new source of wealth almost overflowing. Now to be 
broken in my pitch of pride, and nearly winged (unless 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. 



207 



good news should come), because London chooses to be 
in an uproar, and in the tumult of bulls and bears, a 
poor inoffensive lion like myself is pushed to the wall. 
But what is to be the end of it ? God knows ; and so 
ends the catechism. 

Nobody in the end can lose a penny by me — that is 
one comfort. Men will think pride has had a fall. Let 
them indulge their own pride in thinking that my fall 
will make them higher, or seem so at least. I have the 
satisfaction to recollect that my prosperity has been of 
advantage to many, and to hope that some at least will 
forgive my transient wealth on account of the innocence 
of my intentions, and my real wish to do good to the 
poor. Sad hearts, too, at Darnick, and in the cottages 
of Abbotsford. I have half resolved never to see the 
place again. How could I tread my hall with such 
a diminished crest t How live a poor indebted man, 
where I was once the wealthy — the honored t I was 
to have gone there on Saturday in joy and prosperity to 
receive my friends. My dogs will wait for me in vain. 
It is foolish — but the thoughts of parting from these 
dumb creatures have moved me more than any of the 
painful reflections I ha\e put down. Poor things, I 
must get them kind masters ! There may be yet those 
who, loving me, may love my dog, because it has been 
mine. I must end these gloomy forebodings, or I shall 
lose the tone of mind with which men should meet dis- 
tress. I feel my dogs' feet on my knees. I hear them 
whining and seeking me everywhere. This is nonsense, 
but it is what they would do could they know how things 
may be. An odd thought strikes me — When I die, 
will the journal of these days be taken out of the ebony 



208 LITERATURE. 

cabinet at Abbotsford, and read with wonder, that the 
well-seeming Baronet should ever have experienced the 
risk of such a hitch ? Or will it be found in some ob- 
scure lodging-house, where the decayed son of Chivalry 
had hung up his scutcheon, and where one or two 
old friends will look grave, and whisper to each other, 
" Poor gentleman " — '* a well-meaning man " — '' no- 
body's enemy but his own " — '' thought his parts would 
never wear out " — '' family poorly left " — '' pity he 
took that foolish title." Who can answer this question? 
Poor Will Laidlaw — Poor Tom Purdie — such news 
will wring your hearts, and many a poor fellow besides 
to whom my prosperity was daily bread. — From 
Lockharfs ''Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scatty 



READINGS FROM SCOTT. 



209 



Additional Readings. 

In addition to the foregoing readings, the following 
selections from the Waverley novels are specially recom- 
mended : — 



;. March of the highland army . ("Waverley," chap, iii.) 
Midnight scene. (" Guy Mannering," chap, iii.) 
Servant to the covenanters. (" Old Mortality," chap, xviii.) 
Heleji MacGregor and the outlaws. (" Rob Roy," chap. 

xxxi.) 
Prison scene. (*' The Heart of Midlothian," chap, xx.) 
Trial of Rebecca. (" Ivanhoe," chap, xxxvii.) 

7. Death of George Douglas. ("The Abbot," chap, xxxvii.) 

8. King Richard at the tent of Saladin. ("The Talisman," 

chap, xxviii.) 

9. Wandering Willie'' St ale. (" Redgauntlet," letter xi.) 

10. Funeral of Lord Ravenswood. (" The Bride of Lammer- 
moor," chap, ii.) 




Scott's Collection of Pipes. 



LORD BYRON 



LORD BYRON. 



BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY. 

By John Ebenezer Bryant. 



Byron is one of the world's great poets ; but, like 
the image of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, the material of 
his greatness is not all fine gold. Besides the gold there 
is much baser metal, as " brass and iron," and there is 
even '' miry clay." But, nevertheless, a chief part of 
Byron's greatness is gold — '' fine gold " — like the head 
of Nebuchadnezzar's image; and this gold, unlike the 
gold of the image, will not " crumble to pieces " and 
'' become as the chaff of a threshing floor," but will en- 
dure as long as anything poetical endures. 

George Gordon Byron, afterwards Lord Byron, was 
born in London, January 22, 1788. His ancestry on 
his father's side was of the bluest aristocratical English 
blood, that had descended in an unbroken stream through 
the veins of knights and barons from the time of William 
the Conqueror, downward, until it flushed his own. On 
his mother's side his ancestry was Scotch, and almost 
equally distinguished, for his mother was a Miss Catherine 
Gordon, of Gight, in Aberdeenshire, who traced her descent 
from King James the First of England and Sixth of Scot- 

215 



2l6 



LITERATURE, 



land. But distinguished though his ancestors were, he in- 
herited from them something more than name and station. 
His father, Captain John Byron, who died when his son 
was but three years old, was a spendthrift and a heartless 
rake — '' Mad Jack Byron " he was called. His grand- 
father was an admiral, but one whose adventures were 



wild, stirring, and unfortunate, 
was his appropriate sobriquet. 



^ Foul-Weather Jack " 
His granduncle, from 




Newstead Abbey, the Ancestral Home of Lord Byron. 



whom he inherited his title and estate, was a notorious 
hard liver, known as the " wicked lord." His mother, 
too, was a' woman of such ill-balanced character that in 
her training of her son her conduct could scarcely have 
been worse. " Byron, your mother is a fool," a school- 
fellow once candidly told him. '' I know it," was his 
only and sad reply. With such antecedents as these to 
influence his heredity, it can scarcely be doubted that 
much of what is eccentric and abnormal in Byron's char- 
acter and conduct can well be accounted for. His 



LORD BYRON. 



217 



mother's property having all been squandered by his 
worthless father, Byron's younger years were full of 
poverty. For a while he was at a school at Aberdeen. 
At ten years of age he succeeded to his title and estate, 
but his condition at the time was but little improved 
thereby, for the estate was heavily encumbered. In his 
fourteenth year he was sent to the famous school at 
Harrow. His years at Harrow constituted an important 
epoch in his life, for it was there that he formed the most 
of those friendships, all of them honorable and honoring, 
for which his career is so remarkable. Whatever may 
have been the weakness of Byron's character in regaid 
to the affections which he experienced for women, his 
affections for men, when once he placed them, were 
noble and enduring. For some time at Harrow he was 
very unhappy ; but after a while he became a leader in 
the school, and then his life was perhaps the happiest he 
ever lived. 

In 1805, at the age of seventeen, Byron went to Cam- 
bridge. Here his old friendships were continued, and 
some new ones, equally commendable, were formed. But 
neither at Harrow nor at Cambridge was Byron a stu- 
dent in the ordinary sense of the word. At Harrow he 
read largely of history and biography, but at Cambridge 
he spent but little time in serious pursuits of any sort. 
His life there was, indeed, very irregular. But he prac- 
tised all sorts of athletic games, rode, boxed, and swam 
like a young Spartan, and became so expert with the 
pistol that he was looked upon as a man that could take 
care of himself in any sort of evil circumstances. In 
1808 he left Cambridge, and then spent some time at 
Newstead Abbey, his ancestral home. But the place 



2 1 8 LITERA TURE. 

was badly out of repair, and he had no money to spend 
towards improving it. In 1809 he became of age and 
took his seat in the House of Lords. But want of money, 
reckless living, imprudent adventures and attachments, 
disappointments in love affairs, and numberless other 
things had made him tired of life — tired of England 
especially ; and he determined to go abroad. For two 
years he rambled about in Portugal, Spain, Sardinia, 
Sicily, Malta, Greece, Turkey, and Asia Minor. In 
181 1 he returned to England again. But in the mean- 
time several friends whom he loved dearly had died, and 
his pecuniary condition had but little improved, so that 
he found himself even more miserable than he was 
before he went away. 

Byron's talent for writing poetry was a natural gift, 
an endowment of genius, and it gained little or nothing 
from culture. It was a disposition of the mind which, once 
indulged in, became a habit. During all his life, after 
once the habit was formed, though he must have been 
more occupied than most men, — for even Byron's idle 
pursuits were preoccupying ones, — scarcely a month 
passed that he did not write something that has since 
proved to be a permanent addition to our literature. He 
began to publish in his eighteenth year, his first produc- 
tion being a small collection of poems, which, because an 
elderly friend thought one of them somewhat indelicate, he 
afterward destroyed. In his nineteenth year he published 
his '' Hours of Idleness." This work, though juvenile 
and weak enough, did not deserve the ferocious attack 
which some time after was made upon it by a critic in 
the Edinburgh Reviezv, supposed to be Lord Brougham. 
Byron took a twelvemonth to prepare his reply, but when 



II 



LORD BYROAT, 221 

it appeared (- English Bards and Scotch Reviewers " — 
1809) it showed to the Revieiv, and to all the world be- 
side, that a new literary star had risen in the firmament, 
the fierce brightness of whose flame was likely to pale 
all lesser stars. But though Byron had found in this 
production what was perhaps his true field of literary 
effort — satire — he was as yet too inexperienced in the 
world to produce either satire or any other form of poetry 
on original lines. While he was upon his tour abroad, 
however, he had embodied many of his observations and 
reflections in a series of poems. But of these he had 
thought so little that when he returned to London he 
did not even take the trouble to hunt up a publisher for 
them. A friend, however, accidentally discovered them, 
and, recognizing their worth, persuaded their publication. 
In February, 18 12, they appeared — ^^ Childe Harold, 
Cantos I and II." Their impression upon the public was 
instantaneous and marvellous. As Byron himself so 
appositely expressed it : ''I awoke one morning and 
found myself famous." In five weeks seven editions of 
the book were exhausted. And not only did he win this 
popular success, but in the next two or three years he 
produced a series of poems— ^^ The Giaour," "The Bride 
of Abydos," "The Corsair," "Lara," the "Hebrew Mel- 
odies " — of which each was, if possible, more popular 
than its predecessor. Byron for the time being was the 
most popular author the English people had ever known. 
Even Scott's star, bright and splendid as it was (for 
" Marmion " and " The Lady of the Lake " were still on 
every one's lips), was bedimmed beneath the fiercer 
splendor of this newer luminary. Had Byron died in 
18 1 5 his name would have been written in the book of 



222 LITERATURE. 

fame as that of the most popular poet that ever Hved. 
And yet none of these poems that Byron had so far 
written, not even the first cantos of '' Childe Harold," 
popular as they were, and popular as they still are, were 
of that force and fervency which all enduring great 
poems must possess. A poet must feel and think deeply, 
must suffer, in fact, before he can write great poetry. 
Byron had not suffered yet, he had only imagined he had. 
Byron's relations with the other sex were the great 
determining facts of his life. And as his poetry was the 
outcome of his life (perhaps more so than that of any 
other great poet that ever lived) — the expression of 
what he saw and felt and reflected upon in it — therefore 
these relations became the great determining factors in 
the production of his poetry. And as these relations 
were rarely regulated according to conventional opinion, 
according to conventional modes of thinking and acting, 
it follows that it is impossible to sympathize with Byron, 
even to understand him, much less to appreciate him, 
unless one is prepared to put out of sight and forget (for 
the moment, at any rate) almost every settled opinion 
and rule of conduct which, in respect of sexual relation- 
ship, society has established for its safe-guarding. But 
it must be remembered that Byron was not wholly to 
blame. Both fate and circumstances worked against 
him. We have seen what must have been the inherit- 
ance of disposition that he received from his ancestors 
on his father's side. We have seen, too, how little his 
mother's judgment and conduct were fitted to influence 
him for good. Almost the only principles of morality 
he ever learned, except what he picked up in the rough 
and tumble of an old-time English public school, and 



LORD BYROM 22"; 

except what he learned from books, he owed to the pre- 
cepts of a faithful Scotch nurse, who also taught him his 
Bible (in the knowledge of which, indeed, owing to her 
instructions, he was very proficient). He had a passion 

for loving ; but the only woman he ever really loved 

that is, with an enduring love, at once ardent and pure 
— was his half-sister Augusta, and her he was destined 
rarely ever to see until he had returned from his travels 
abroad, with a man's full years and with more than a 
man's full experience. His earlier loves seem always to 
have been crossed. When yet a young boy he was in 
love with his cousin, Mary Duff, who afterward married 
another. When scarcely more than a boy he was in 
love with another cousin, Margaret Parker, who after- 
ward died. When he was sixteen years of age he loved 
and would have married Mary Chaworth, a distant rela- 
tive and the heiress of estates that adjoined his own; 
but she treated him coldly and disdained his advances, 
though ever afterward, even to the last year of his life, 
he treasured his idealization of her memory and made 
her the subject of some of his finest verse. All these 
passions were conventional enough; but there were 
others that were not so conventional. Some of his ten- 
derest poems, some of the sweetest and most pathetic 
expressions of regret and sorrow he ever wrote, were 
addressed to the memory of '^Thyrza"; but who 
''Thyrza" was is not known, nor would Byron ever 
declare. An explanation given by some of his biog- 
raphers is that '^Thyrza" was a young girl, of lower 
social degree than himself, who made sacrifices of every- 
thing for his sake, even so far as to accompany him 
through England on horseback as his brother. But 



226 LITERATURE. 

other biographers do not identify " Thyrza " with this 
poor girl. 

When Byron came back to England from his Euro- 
pean tour his experience of the world on all matters of 
the heart was, at all events, sufficient to entitle him to 
settle down in quietness and decorum. This, however, 
he was not permitted to do. The social popularity which 
the successful publication of '' Childe Harold " suddenly 
thrust upon him would have turned heads much more 
stably fixed than his. Girls and women of every rank 
in life literally threw themselves at him. He was hand- 
some — scarcely any one more so, both in face and 
figure — though slightly deformed in one foot, a defect 
from physical perfection which greatly chafed him. His 
friends who used to bathe with him used to say that his 
torso and limbs were as superbly turned as any Apollo's. 
He was of noble descent and title. His estate, though 
encumbered, was one of the finest and stateliest in the 
kingdom. He was a poet, and a great and popular one. 
He had travelled and seen the world, and was a charming 
and vivacious companion. Moreover, as the '' tang " in 
the wine gives to it its appetizing flavor, so he had just 
enough of a reputation for recklessness and wickedness 
to give to his career, his person, his manners, and his 
character, an interest so keen and enjoyable that even 
the properest sort of people felt no scruple in avowing 
it. In short, he was the lion of the town. His society 
and his friendship were sought for by every one. Not 
a family in the kingdom, however old or noble, but 
would have deemed an alliance with him an honor. And 
all the time he was the object of secret advances from 
dames and damsels of the highest social position and the 



LORD BYRON. 



229 



highest social character. Let all this be remembered 
when Byron's own undoubted faults are up for judg- 
ment. He did not marry, however, and after a while, 
his social relationships becoming in some quarters rather 
particular and intimate, he ceased to be the object of 
general adoration which he at first had been. But in 
the autumn of 18 14 he proposed to a Miss Milbanke. 
She refused at first, but suggested a correspondence. 
The correspondence thus begun went on with much 
interest and affection, and after a little while Byron 
proposed a second time, but, it must be confessed, 
neither with earnestness nor enthusiasm. The second 
proposal was accepted, however. They were married 
in January, 1 8 1 5 . A child (his daughter Ada) was born 
to them in December. On January 15, 18 16, Lady 
Byron left her husband's house to visit her parents, 
writing to her husband on the journey a loving and 
tenderly playful letter. In a very short time, however 
(a few days), she sent him word that she would never 
return. Nor did she ever return. Her parents de- 
manded a legal separation ; and this, after he had vainly 
endeavored to secure a reconciliation (scarcely believing 
the action to be in earnest at first), Byron consented to. 
The world of London turned at once, as if in rage, against 
its former favorite, and he who a year or two before had 
been the idol of society, became now the object of its 
bitterest contumely and reproach. 

This estrangement of Lord Byron and his wife, this 
separation so suddenly brought about, so persistently 
persevered in by Lady Byron's friends (for it is admitted 
that Byron himself courted reconciliation several times), 
is the domestic incident that has excited the most 



230 



LITERA TURE, 



interest in the whole range of hterary history. And it 
has never been satisfactorily explained. Byron used to 
say that there was nothing of importance to explain. 
Lady Byron's friends never offered the public any real 
explanation, but gave out many grave and serious hints. 
General incompatibility is the most frequently alleged 




Lady Byron. 



cause ; but that, in face of Lady Byron's tender message 
on first leaving him and then her sudden taking on of a 
wholly different attitude, cannot be regarded as sufficient. 
Lady Byron was a woman of upright character and 
strict views as to behavior, and she might have regarded 
her alliance with a man like Byron as an offence against 
her principles ; but even if this were granted, her deport- 
ment to her husband on leaving him is unexplainable ; 



LORD BYRON. 23 I 

and her subsequent deportment to him when he courted 
reconciliation is thought by many to have been too im- 
placable. But, on the other hand, she is believed to 
have been a just woman, one who would not have 
acted as she did without, at least, thinking she had suffi- 
cient cause for her action. The affair, however, would 
no doubt have long since been relegated to the realm 
of oblivion had not in our own time and in our own 
country one of our own countrywomen taken part in it. 
About thirty years ago Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe pub- 
lished in the Atlantic Monthly a statement said to have 
been obtained directly from Lady Byron herself, which 
accused Byron of having a scandalous relationship with 
one whom he was believed always to have tenderly and 
honorably loved. The allegations in this statement may 
have been made by Lady Byron, and when she made 
them they may have been believed by her to be true ; 
but no one in England believes that at the time of the 
estrangement she believed them, or that she even made 
them then. The explanation is, that afterward, when in 
failing health and failing mind, she may have made them, 
and may then have believed them to be true. 

But to Byron the estrangement, whatever may have 
been the reasonableness or unreasonableness of it, was 
of most evil consequence. He left England soon after 
(April, 1 8 16), and never returned to it again. He resided 
for some time in Switzerland, and there unfortunately made 
acquaintances that proved to be more than passing inti- 
macies. His daughter, Allegra, whom he most tenderly 
loved, and whom he most tenderly cared for as long as 
she lived, was born in 18 17. In the meantime he had 
come to Italy and taken up his residence at Venice ; and 



232 



LITER A TV RE. 



there Lord Byron's course took its lowest dip. His life 
at Venice will hardly be excused even by his warm- 
est defenders ; and for two years or more nothing but 
his devotion to poetry was its redeeming feature. In 
1 8 19, however, he fell under the influence of a passion 
which, though irregular, judged by Anglo-Saxon canons 
of morality, was not considered so irregular in the coun- 
try where it had its being. The Countess of Guiccioli, a 
young and beautiful girl, who, for the sake of the connec- 
tion it established for her family, had been married to an 
old man of sixty, of ancient title and large estates, met 
Byron and fell deeply and hopelessly in love with him. 
Though somewhat sated with loving by this time, Byron 
reciprocated the young countess's attachment, and after 
a number of necessary preliminaries (Count Guiccioli 
consenting, and the parents and family of the countess, 
also), Byron and the countess were domesticated together. 
The universal testimony of all who visited Byron during 
the few short years that remained to him after this 
arrangement began is that the countess made for him a 
congenial and lovable companion. 

It was in the inauspicious and evil circumstances of his 
early life in Italy that Byron wrote some of his strongest 
work — the last canto of " Childe Harold," '' Manfred," 
''The Lament of Tasso," " Mazeppa," " Beppo," and the 
first two cantos of " Don Juan." The third canto of 
"Childe Harold" and "The Prisoner of Chillon " had 
been written in Switzerland. The remainder of his liter- 
ary work, the very strongest of all he wrote, was produced 
in the home that was made for him by the loving care of 
the Countess Guiccioli. But even successful literary 
work, much as his heart and pride were in it, and even 




Lord Byron. 
From a sketch by Count D' Orsay, May, 1823. 



LORD BYRON. 



235 



the serenity and comfort of happy domesticity, which 
now for the first time in his hfe he was enjoying, were 
not enough to keep the heart and soul of- such a man as 
Byron securely anchored. For with all his faults, and 
no man ever made a worse use of such as he had, Byron 
had a true and tender heart, and an ambitious and noble- 
purposed soul. His estrangement from his wife, his 
separation from his daughter, greatly fretted and pained 
him. That in respect of his conduct toward his wife the 
world would finally exonerate him of serious wrong- 
doing w^hen it should know all the facts, though it might 
blame him for his follies, he firmly believed ; and that it 
might know all the facts he drew up his " Memoirs " and 
intrusted them to his friend, the poet Moore, for publi- 
cation after his death ; but, unfortunately for Byron's 
reputation, Moore rather thoughtlessly allowed these 
memoirs to be destroyed. But though Byron had thus 
done what he could to set his mind at rest regarding a 
matter that touched his pride as well as his heart to the 
quick, and though he seemed to gain greater literary power 
with every verse he wrote, and though his home life was 
a happier one than ever before he had known, yet his 
unsatisfactory relationship with the great world of soci- 
ety and action which he was so well fitted to take a 
shining and commanding part in, made him dissatisfied 
with the whole tenor of his existence — domestic hap- 
piness and comfort, literary success and honor, and 
everything else. 

But a wider field of action immediately opened before 
him. The patriots of Greece ardently sought his sym- 
pathy and his aid. He joined the cause for the restora- 
tion of Hellenic liberty ; and he determined to devote 



236 LITERATURE. 

his life, his means, and his talents to the cause he had 
adopted. On July 14, 1823, he bade farewell to his 
devoted "Theresa" (the Countess of Guiccioli), and 
accompanied by her brother. Count Gamba, who was his 
faithful companion to the last, he set sail from Genoa in 
a ship that he had had fitted out for him, to take a per- 
sonal and practical part in the fight which the Greeks 
were making against their enslavers. Arrived in Greece, 
he was hailed as a heaven-sent deliverer. He was made 
a commander-in-chief, and asked to share in the governor- 
ship of the Morea. But Greece was full of factions, and 
a wise course of action was exceedingly difficult. How- 
ever, Byron was sagacious and prudent, both in acting 
and in not acting, and he soon convinced the Greeks of 
all factions that he was one whose judgment could be 
relied upon. He was appointed commissioner to dispense 
the loan of a million crowns which the friends of Greece 
in England had been able to raise for the patriotic revo- 
lutionists ; and had he lived there is no doubt that he 
would have been asked to occupy a regal throne. But 
it was not to be. Byron's work was over. The place 
where he was stationed, Missolonghi, proved to be a 
veritable fever-bed. Byron's constitution was peculiarly 
susceptible to miasmatic influences, and he was implored 
to leave and go elsewhere. But he would not. He 
thought that to do so would be to show cowardice. He 
took the fever ; he was treated most unwisely by his 
physicians; and he died, April 19, 1824. Thirty-seven 
guns were fired in his honor, one for every year of his 
life, and for twenty-one days Greece went in mourning. 
She also begged for the body of her " liberator "to be 
buried in the Temple of Theseus at Athens. But the 



LORD BYRON". 2^7 

remains were taken to England. It was thought that 
the great poet would have been buried in Westminster 
Abbey. But an objection was raised, and by his sister's 
wish he was taken to the burial place of his ancestors at 
Hucknall, near Newstead, where now she, also, and his 
little daughter, Ada, the two beings whom he loved most 
tenderly of all, lie with him. 

Byron's work, marred though it often is by much that 
the moralist and the man of good taste must alike con- 
demn, belongs, nevertheless, to the world's greatest liter- 
ature. It was great because he himself was great — 
great in force, in scope of observation, in range of sym- 
pathy, in imaginative idealization, in descriptive faculty, 
and in the power of putting into clear and memorable 
language reflections that when once read seem to come 
to the minds of all readers like thoughts inborn within 
themselves. But he had an even greater ability than 
any of these — the ability to see the absurdity, the weak- 
ness, the want of consistency or reasonableness, in the 
mental and moral attitude of men and women, and of 
societies, communities, and nations, as to all matters of 
social conduct ; and the ability also to describe this 
weakness and to make it a matter for the laughter of 
gods and men. In other words, he was the greatest 
social satirist that the modern world has known. Such 
works as "The Vision of Judgment " and "Don Juan " 
(for " Don Juan " is really a satire) are unequalled in 
literature. They may offend our sense of propriety, 
and undoubtedly they do. They may be unfit for read- 
ing to any but men and women of fixed principles and 
settled habits of conduct, and undoubtedly they are. 
But, nevertheless, in force and swiftness of execution, in 



238 LITERATURE. 

deftness of touch, in color, in action, in vivid imaginative 
groupings and dispositions, in interest, in the expression 
of varied feehngs from humor to i-)athos, from tlie ricHcu- 
lous to the subhme, they excel all other poetic composi- 
tions that ever have been written. Many critics have 
described " The Vision of Judgment " as the greatest 
social satire of modern times. So noble-minded a judge 
as Sir Walter Scott pronounced ** Don Juan " as having 
*' the variety even of Shakespeare." Goethe said of it : 
" It is full of soul and is exquisitely delicate in its ten- 
derness." Shelley spoke of it as " wholly new, and yet 
surpassingly beautiful." And in such opinions as these 
the world of lesser critics also pretty generally concur. 

Byron's greatness as a poet lay in the simplicity, the 
naturalness, the force, the directness, the felicity or 
appositeness, and oftentimes the beauty, of his descrip- 
tions and reflections. His was not a creative intellect. 
He gave to the world no new thought, no new philoso- 
phy, no new and profound explanation of life and its 
mysteries, no new inspirations of hope and trust and 
faith — in short, nothing to make the world better, or 
brighter, or happier, except an enjoyment for tlie i)ass- 
ing hour, a pleasing but temporary incitement of the 
feeling and fancy. His influence, therefore, is wholly 
titillative and sensuous, although so in an exceptionally 
superior degree. That is to say, it is not inspirational 
or inseminating. It produces no permanent emotion ; it 
develops no lasting impulses toward either thought or 
action. Its effect is wholly superficial and evanescent. 

Many of Byron's reflections and descriptions were 
uttered by the characters he created, and might, there- 
fore, be expected to have partaken of his characters' idio- 



LORD BYRON. 



239 



syncrasies ; in other words, to have been as dramatic in 
reahty as the)^ were in form. But I^yron's want of crea- 
tive power was manifested here also. He did not 
possess the gift of dramatic characterization. His hero- 
ines, outwardly so many varying types of physical loveli- 
ness, were inwardly only so many varying types of the 
capacity for loving and being loved. Of other gifts and 
graces we discover but little in their creator's presenta- 
tion of them. His heroes, too, were merely modifica- 
tions of one master type, and that, no doubt, his own. 
The hero of " Childe Harold" was intended at first to 
be a dramatic character ; but long before the poem was 
finished the author ceased even to pretend to make the 
character anything other than his own. The other great 
characters of Byron — Manfred, Cain, Lara, Conrad, the 
Giaour, etc. — are but idealizations — oftentimes extreme 
idealizations — of phases of character which Byron found 
in himself. Even Don Juan is but the completer realiza- 
tion of what Byron was, or fancied that he could have 
been, in his youth. But it must be remembered that 
Byron made no pretence in his poetical work (except in 
his lyrics) to be anything else than a narrator. Where 
he gives his poems a dramatic form, or has his charac- 
ters speak in their own persons, it is merely to make his 
narrative run the more easily. A great point of praise 
for Byron is that he rarely misestimated the scope of his 
own genius, and so made few failures. His work, such 
as he did, is what he could do easiest and bes ; and he 
did not even attempt any sort of work that he could not 
do well. 

As a rule, Byron had only two sets of intellectual 
operations to put into words ; first, the description of a 



240 



LITER A TURK. 



fact, the narration of an incident, the telh'ng of a story ; 
and, second, the expression of some reflection. He saw 
his facts clearly, and he endeavored to express them 
clearly. His story-telling, therefore, was always simple 
and direct. His reflections, too, as mental processes, 
were equally clear-cut. They were never profound or 
esoteric ; in fact, they were generally obvious, and often- 
times scarcely more than superficial. These, also, he 




Arms of the Byron Family. 



endeavored to express with the utmost clearness. His 
style, therefore, partook of the simplicity and directness 
of his mental operations. As he became more and more 
experienced in authorship it became the very perfection 
of simplicity and " rush." He never loitered or dawdled. 
He went continuously on — leaping over or passing 
round an obstacle — never stopping to remove it. In 
time his song flight became the very swiftest of all our 
poetic choir. He was not, however, in the least pains- 
taking in what he wrote. He was scarcely even passably 



LORD BYRON. 24 1 

SO. His mistakes in syntax, and in construction, were 
frequent enough to bring upon him the contemptuous 
criticism of many grammarians. His want of ear, or, 
rather, his carelessness in all matters of the ear — in 
melody, rhythm, rhyme, etc. — has made Swinburne say 
that no other poet of any considerable renown ever 
wrote so badly as he. At times, too, he gets so hope- 
lessly entangled in his metaphors, similes, and other 
poetic images, as to be scarcely intelligible. But all 
these defects are merely as grains of dust in the pure 
wheat. The great body of Byron's verse proceeds as 
directly straight ahead, and is as easily understood, as 
the '' Pilgrim's Progress " or the " Proverbs of Solomon." 

The reason why Byron's method of expression was so 
simple and direct is that his natural gift of expression 
was so great that everything he wrote he wrote without 
effort — with ''running pen," as the Romans used to 
say. As for style, he paid no thought to it whatever. 
He never elaborated his composition. '' I am like the 
tiger in the jungle," he used to say ; " if I miss my first 
spring I go off grumbling to my lair again." 

Nor of versification did he make any study. Of the 
various forms of verse which he used those which he 
most followed were adopted out of mere fancy or caprice ; 
one, because it had been used by his favorite Pope ; an- 
other, because Scott had had success with it ; and so on. 
Even the " ottava rima," the eight-lined verse of " Beppo " 
and " Don Juan," which he has made so peculiarly his 
own, — of which, indeed, he is the greatest master of all 
who ever handled it, — was adopted almost by accident. 
In short, Byron was not an artist, either in composition 
or versification, and he never attempted to be one. The 



242 



LITER A TURE. 



assiduous pains of poets like Tennyson, or Longfellow, 
or Gray, or his favorite Pope, or even Scott, he never 
practised, or even dreamed of. His untutored genius 
was, in his judgment, all-sufficing, and he was quite will- 
ing to have it thought so. Indeed, he was quite willing 
to have it thought that poetry was to him a natural gift 
— one that had come to him without any effort or desire 
on his part, much as his title of nobility had come to 
him. He never cared to consider himself simply as a 
poet. At first, and for a long time, he even would not 
receive any pay for his poetry, permitting his friends to 
reap the financial benefits that arose from his exercise of 
his genius ; although when he had thus allowed several 
thousand pounds to slip out of his hands, because of his 
foolish pride, he became more sensible, and took pay like 
any one else. Afterward, indeed, he got so that he 
could drive as hard bargains with his publishers as any 
other author. But never, even when most popular as a 
writer, or even when most powerful, did he abate one jot 
from that jauntiness of demeanor which made him appear 
as if he cared not one whit for his poetic fame ; and in 
good truth he did care but little for it. 



CRITICAL STUDIES AND REMINISCENCES. 



LADY BLESSINGTOn's PORTRAIT OF BYRON. 

" I HAD fancied him taller, with a more dignified and 
commanding air, and I looked in vain for the hero- 
looking sort of person with whom I had so long identi- 
fied him in imagination. His appearance is, however, 
highly prepossessing ; his head is finely shaped, and the 
forehead open, high, and noble ; his eyes are grey and 
full of expression, but one is visibly larger than the 
other ; his mouth is the most remarkable feature in his 
face, the upper lip of Grecian shortness, and the corners 
descending, the lips full and finely cut. In speaking 
he shows his teeth very much, and they are white and 
even ; but I observed that even in his smile — and he 
smiles frequently — there is something of a scornful 
expression in his mouth that is evidently natural and 
not, as many suppose, affected. . . . His countenance 
is full of expression, and changes with the subject of 
conversation ; it gains on the beholder the more it is 
seen, and leaves an agreeable impression. ... He is 
very slightly lame, and the deformity of his foot is so 
little remarkable that I am not now aware which foot 
it is. His voice and accent are peculiarly agreeable but 
effeminate — clear, harmonious, and so distinct that, 
though his general tone in speaking is rather low than 
high, not a word is lost. ... I had expected to find 

243 



244 



UTERA TURE, 



him a dignified, cold, reserved, and haughty person, 
resembUng those mysterious personages he so loves to 
paint in his works, and with whom he has been so often 
identified by the good-natured world. But nothing can 
be more different ; for were I to point out the promi- 
nent defect in Lord Byron, I should say it was flip- 
pancy, and a total want of that natural self-possession 
and dignity which ought to characterize a man of birth 
and education." Upon which Mr. William Minto re- 
marks : " Such, judged by the social standards of his 
own country, was the look and personal manner of the 
greatest literary power of this century." 

byron's self-consciousness as to his lameness. 

It is certain that one of the poet's feet was, either at 
birth or at a very early period, so seriously clubbed or 
twisted as to affect his gait, and to a considerable 
extent his habits. It also appears that the surgical 
means — boots, bandages, etc. — adopted to straighten 
the limb only aggravated the evil. His sensitiveness 
on the subject was early awakened by careless or un- 
feeling references. "What a pretty boy Byron is!" 
said a friend to his nurse. " What a pity he has such a 
leg ! " On which the child, with flashing eyes, cutting 
at her with a baby's whip, cried out, '' Dinna speak of 
it." His mother herself, in her violent fits, when the 
boy ran round the room laughing at her attempts to 
catch him, used to say he was a little dog, as bad as his 
father, and to call him ''a lame brat" — an incident 
which notoriously suggested the opening scene of the 
"Deformed Transformed." In the height of his popu- 



STUDIES AN-D REMINISCENCES OE BYRON. 245 

larity he fancied that the beggars and street-sweepers 
in London were mocking him. He satirized and dis- 
couraged dancing ; he preferred riding and swimming to 
other exercises, because they concealed his weakness ; 
and on his deathbed asked to be bhstered in such a 
way that he might not be called on to expose it. The 
Countess Guiccioli, Lady Blessington, and others assure 
us that in society few would have observed the defect 
if he had not referred to it ; but it was never far from 
the mind, and therefore never far from the mouth, of 
the least reticent of men. — John Nichol. 

BYRON AND LADY BYRON. 

There is a kind of genius, closely associated with 
intense irritability, which it is difficult to subject to the 
most reasonable yoke; and of this sort was Byron's. 
His valet, Fletcher, is reported to have said that " Any 
woman could manage my lord, except my lady " ; and 
Madame De Stael, on reading the " Farewell," that 
" She would have been glad to have been in Lady 
Byron's place." But it may be doubted if Byron would 
have made a good husband to any woman ; his wife and 
he were even more than unusually ill-assorted. A 
model of the proprieties, and a pattern of the learned 
philanthropy of which, in her sex, he was wont to make 
a constant butt, she was no fit consort for that " mms 
insana in coif ore insanoJ' What could her placid tem- 
perament conjecture of a man whom she saw, in one of 
his fits of passion, throwing a favorite watch under the 
fire, and grinding it to pieces with a poker .^ Or how 
could her conscious virtue tolerate the recurring irregu- 



246 LIT ERA T UKE. 

larities which he was accustomed, not only to permit 
himself, but to parade ? The harassment of his affairs 
stimulated his violence, till she was inclined to suspect 
him to be mad. — John Nichol. 



INCOMPATIBILITY OF BYRON AND LADY BYRON. 

Some of Lady Byron's recently printed letters — as 
that to Lady Anne Barnard, and the reports of later 
observers of her character, as William Howitt — tend 
to detract from the earlier tributes to her consistent 
amiability, and confirm our ideas of the incompatibility 
of the pair. It must have been trying to a poet to be 
asked by his wife, impatient of his late hours, when he 
was going to leave off writing verses ; to be told he had 
no real enthusiasm ; or to have his desk broken open, 
and its compromising contents sent to the persons for 
whom they were least intended. The smouldering ele- 
ments of discontent may have been fanned by the gos- 
sip of dependants, or the officious zeal of relatives, and 
kindled into a jealous flame by the ostentation of regard 
for others beyond the circle of his home. Lady Byron 
doubtless believed some story which, when communi- 
cated to her legal advisers, led them to the conclusion 
that the mere fact of her believing it made reconcili- 
ation impossible ; and the inveterate obstinacy which 
lurked beneath her gracious exterior made her cling 
through life to the substance — not always to the form, 
whatever that may have been — of her first impressions. 
Her later letters to Mrs. Leigh, as that called forth by 
Moore's '' Life," are certainly as open to the charge of 



STUDIES AND REMINISCENCES OF BYRON. 247 



v^ 



1^ 



HH1n-^4^'' 






fK^t 







248 LITERATURE 

self-righteousness as those of her husband's are to self- 
disparagement. — John Nichol. 

'' THYRZA.' 

But the death which most deeply wounded Byron came 
later.i Nothing ever racked him with sharper anguish 
than the death of her whom he mourned under the 
name of Thyrza. To know the bitterness of his 
struggle with this sorrow, we have only to look at what 
he wrote on the day that the news reached him (Oct. 
II, 1 8 1 1 ) ; some of his wildest and most purely mis- 
anthropical verse, as well as some of his sweetest and 
saddest, belongs to that blackest of dates in his calen- 
dar. It is time that something were done to trace this 
attachment, which has been strangely overlooked by the 
essayists and biographers, because it furnishes an im- 
portant clue to Byron's character, and is, indeed, of 
hardly less importance than his later attachment to the 
Countess Guiccioli. Mr. John Morley, in an essay 
which ought to be read by everybody who wishes to 
form a clear idea of Byron's poetry as a revolutionary 
force in itself and an index to the movement of the 
time, remarks upon the respect which Byron, with all 
his raillery of the married state in modern society, still 
shows for the domestic idea. It is against the artificial 
union, the marriage of convenience, that Byron's raillery 
is directed ; he always upholds singleness of attachment 
as an ideal, however cynically or mournfully he laments 
its infrequence, and points with laughter or with tears 

^Mr. Minto had been previously speaking of the deaths of Byron's friends, Matthews 
and Wingfield; also of the death of the poet's mother. 



STUDIES AND REMINISCENCES OF BYRON. 



249 



at the way in which it is crossed and cut short by cir- 
cumstances when it does exist. Byron is not a railer 
against matrimony, except as a counterfeit of the natu- 
ral union of hearts. His attachment to Thyrza shows 
that in this, as in other matters, he was transparently 
sincere. — William Minto. 

byron's real constancy of affection. 

To look for the causes of moodiness and melancholy 
in material circumstances is a very foolish quest ; but 
we may be certain that insufficiency of this world's 
money, and the daily vexations and insults to which his 
rank was thereby exposed, had much more to do with 
Byron's youthful gloom than satiety of this world's 
pleasures. His embarrassed finances, and the impossi- 
bility of securing the respect due to his title, formed a 
constant source of annoyance, put his whole system into a 
morbid condition in which every little slight and repulse 
festered and rankled with exaggerated virulence. From 
the daily humiliations and impertinences to which his 
false position exposed him, aggravated by his jealous 
and suspicious irritability, he may have turned some- 
times to Childe Harold's consolations — ^' the harlot 
and the bowl," but his nature prompted him rather to 
forget his vexations in purer and worthier objects. Un- 
fortunately for him, such impetuous and passionate 
affections as his could rarely find the response for 
which he craved. In those few cases where devotion 
was repaid with devotion, the warmth of his gratitude 
was unbounded ; he loaded poor Thyrza' s memory with 
caresses, careless of what the world might say, remem- 



250 LITER A TURE. 

bering only that the poor girl clung to him with unself- 
ish love ; and he returned his sister's tender regard 
with an ardor and constancy that showed how highly 
he prized, and how eagerly he reciprocated, sincere affec- 
tion. — William Minto. 



SCOTT, ON BYRON AND BURNS. 

I saw him for the last time in (September) 18 15, 
after I returned from France ; he dined or lunched with 
me at Long's in Bond Street. I never saw him so full 
of gaiety and good humor. The day of this interview 
was the most interesting I ever spent. Several letters 
passed between us — one perhaps every half year. 
Like the old heroes in Homer we exchanged gifts ; I 
gave Byron a beautiful dagger mounted with gold, 
which had been the property of the redoubted Elfi Bey. 
But I was to play the part of Diomed in the '' Iliad," 
for Byron sent me, some time after, a large sepulchral 
vase of silver, full of dead men's bones, found within 
the land walls of Athens. He was often melancholy, 
almost gloomy. When I observed him in this humor 
I used either to wait till it went off of its own accord, 
or till some natural and easy mode occurred of leading 
him into conversation, when the shadows almost always 
left his countenance, like the mist arising from a land- 
scape. I think I also remarked in his temper starts of 
suspicion, when he seemed to pause and consider 
whether there had not been a secret and perhaps offen^ 
sive meaning in something that was said to him. In 
this case I also judged it best to let his mind, like a 
troubled spring, work itself clear, which it did in a min- 



STUDIES AND REMINISCENCES OF BYRON. 25 I 

ute or two. A downright steadiness of manner was 
the way to his good opinion. Will Rose, looking by ac- 
cident at his feet, saw him scowling furiously ; but on 
his showing no consciousness, his lordship resumed his 
easy manner. What I liked about him, besides his 
boundless genius, was his generosity of spirit, as well 
as of purse, and his utter contempt of all the affecta- 
tions of literature. He liked Moore and me because, 
with all our other differences, we were both good- 
natured fellows, not caring to maintain our dignity, 
enjoying the mot-pour-rire. He wrote from impulse, 
never from effort, and therefore I have always reckoned 
Burns and Byron the most genuine poetic geniuses 
of my time, and of half a century before me. — Sir 
Walter Scott. 



BYRON AND THE WORLD S TREATMENT OF HIM. 

He came into the world ; and the world treated him 
as his mother had treated him, sometimes with fondness, 
sometimes with cruelty, never with justice. It indulged 
him without discrimination and punished him without 
discrimination. He was truly a spoiled child ; not 
merely the spoiled child of his parent, but the spoiled 
child of nature, the spoiled child of fortune, the spoiled 
child of fame, the spoiled child of society. His first 
poems were received with a contempt which, feeble as 
they were, they did not absolutely deserve. The poem 
which he published on his return from his travels was, on 
the other hand, extolled far above its merit. At twenty- 
four he found himself on the pinnacle of literary fame, 
with Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, and a crowd of other 



252 



LITER A TURE. 



distinguished writers beneath his feet. There is scarcely 
an instance in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy 
an eminence. Everything that could stimulate and 
everything that could gratify the strongest propensities 
of our nature, the gaze of a hundred drawing rooms, the 
acclamations of the whole nation, the applause of ap- 
plauded men, the love of lovely women, all this world 
and all the glory of it, were at once offered to a youth 




The Villa Diodati. 

The Residence of Lord Byron. From a Draviing by Purser. 



to whom nature had given violent passions, and whom 
education had never taught to control them. He lived 
as many men live who have no similar excuse to plead 
for their faults. But his countrymen and countrywomen 
would love and admire him. They were resolved to see 



STUDIES AND REMINISCENCES OF B YR ON. 253 

in his excesses only the flash and outbreak of that same 
fiery mind which glowed in his poetry. . . . Everything, 
it seemed, was to be forgiven to youth, rank, and genius. 
Then came the reaction. Society, capricious in its indig- 
nation as it had been capricious in its fondness, flew into 
a rage with its froward and petted darling. He had 
been worshipped with an irrational idolatry. He was 
persecuted with an irrational fury. — Lord Macaulay. 



BYRON AND SCOTT BYRON S FORCE AND IMPETUOSITY. 

Like Scott, Byron is often defective in his rhymes and 
the other minutiae of his art, and is wanting in exquisite 
finish in general and absolute perfection and felicity of 
expression in occasional passages. But the positive blots 
on his style are more frequent and more offensive than 
those of Scott, while his best passages are finer. He 
lacked the patience and self-discipline, he lacked the 
single-minded devotion to art, without thought of self, 
requisite for the production of perfect works of art. 
Like Scott, he wrote with great rapidity. The " Bride 
of Abydos " is said to have been written in four days; 
the "Corsair" in ten days; the third canto of "Childe 
Harold " in a few weeks ; the fourth, in its original draft 
of 126 stanzas, in a month. He wrote to relieve him- 
self, or impress the public, not to produce something 
perfectly beautiful. He falls beneath Scott in the 
broader technical excellencies of structure, unity, devel- 
opment, etc. His poems consist of passages of greater 
or less excellence,, strung together without much connec- 
tion or plan. Yet there is a force and variety in Byron's 
work that carries us along, so that in such poems as 



254 



LIT ERA TURE. 



" Childe Harold " and '^ Don Juan " we scarcely note 
this lack. Here, indeed, we come upon the qualities 
that give Byron's verse its permanent place in literature. 
Two critics as different as Swinburne and Matthew Ar- 



^«=-e=3S«?"S^^s^'^5p'S>"^^^ ^ ^J» ^"C'' 




Franciscan Convent, Athens. 

The Residence of Lord Byron, iSii. From a Drawing by C. Sianjzeld, A.R. A. 



nold agree in according to his poetry '' the splendid and 
imperishable excellence which covers all his offences and 
outweighs all his defects : the excellence of sincerity and 
strengthy — Professor W. J. Alexander, Ph.D. 



S T UDIES AND REMINISCENCES OF B YR ON. 255 



byron's independence and individuality as a poet. 

The position of Byron as a poet is a curious one. He 
is partly of the past and partly of the present. Some- 
thing of the school of Pope clings to him ; yet no one so 
completely broke away from old measures and old man- 
ners to make his poetry individual, not imitative. At 
first he has no interest whatever in the human questions 
which were so strongly felt by Wordsworth and Shelley. 
His early work is chiefly narrative poetry, written that 
he might talk of himself and not of mankind. Nor has 
he any philosophy except that which centres round the 
problem of his own being. '' Cain," the most thought- 
ful of his productions, is in reality nothing more than 
the representation of the way in which the doctrines of 
original sin and final reprobation affected his own soul. 
We feel naturally great interest in this strong personal- 
ity, put before us with such obstinate power, but it 
wearies us at last. Finally it wearied himself. As he 
grew in power, he escaped from his morbid self, and ran 
Tnto the opposite extreme in "Don Juan." It is chiefly 
in it that he shows the influence of the revolutionary 
spirit. It is written in bold revolt against all the con- 
ventionality of social morality and religion and politics. 
It claimed for himself and for others absolute freedom 
of individual act and thought in opposition to that force 
of society which tends to make all men after one pat- 
tern. This was the best result of his work, though the 
way in which it was done can scarcely be approved. As 
the poet of nature, he belongs also to the old and the new 
school. Byron's sympathy with Nature is a sympathy 



256 LITERATURE, 

with himself reflected in her moods. But he also es- 
caped from this position of the later eighteenth-century 
poets, and he looks on Nature as she is, apart from him- 
self ; and this escape is made, as in the case of his poetry 
of man, in his later poems. Lastly, it is his colossal power, 
and the ease that comes from it, in which he resembles 
Dryden, as well as his amazing productiveness, which 
mark him specially. But it is always more power of the 
intellect than of the imagination. — Stopford A. Brooke. 

byron's addiction to self-portraiture. 

His descriptions, great as was their intrinsic merit, 
derived their principal interest from the feeling which 
always mingled with them. He was himself the begin- 
ning, the middle, and the end of all his own poetry, 
the hero of every tale, the chief object in every land- 
scape. Harold, Lara, Manfred, and a crowd of other 
characters were universally considered merely as loose 
incognitos of Byron ; and there is every reason to be- 
lieve that he meant them to be so considered. The 
wonders of the outer world, the Tagus, with the mighty 
fleets of England riding on its bosom, the towers of 
Cintra overhanging the shaggy forest of cork-trees and 
willows, the glaring marble of Pentelicus, the banks of 
the Rhine, the glaciers of Clarens, the sweet lake of 
Leman, the dell of Eo:eria, with its summer birds and 
rustling lizards, the shapeless ruins of Rome overgrown 
with ivy and wall-flowers, the stars, the sea, the moun- 
tains, all were mere accessories, the background to one 
dark and melancholy figure. — Lord Macaulay. 



STUDIES AND REMINISCENCES OF BYRON. 257 



BYRON S MORBIDNESS OF FEELING. 

Never had any writer so vast a command of the whole 
eloquence of scorn, misanthropy, and despair. That 




The Maid of Athens. 

From a Sketch made from Life in 1823. The Poem was written in iBlo. 

Marah was never dry. No art could sweeten, no 
draughts could exhaust, its perennial waters of bitter- 
ness. Never was there such variety in monotony as 
that of Byron. From maniac laughter to piercing 
lamentation, there was not a single note of human 
anguish of which he was not master. Year after year, 
and month after month, he continued to repeat that to 
be wretched is the destiny. of all ; that to be eminently 
wretched is the destiny of the eminent; that all the 



258 LITERATURE. 

desires by which we are cursed lead alike to misery, — 
if they are not gratified, to the misery of disappoint- 
ment ; if they are gratified, to the misery of satiety. 
His heroes are men who have arrived by different roads 
at the same goal of despair, who are sick of life, who 
are at war with society, who are supported in their 
anguish only by an unconquerable pride resembling that 
of Prometheus on the rock, or of Satan in the burning 
marl, who can master their agonies by the force of their 
will, and who, to the last, defy the whole power of earth 
and heaven. He always described himself as a man of 
the same kind with his favorite creations, as a man 
whose heart had been withered, v/hose capacity for hap- 
piness was gone and could not be restored, but whose 
invincible spirit dared the worst that could befall him 
here or hereafter. — Lord Macaulay. 



THE DECLINE IN BYRON S REPUTATION. 

During his lifetime Byron enjoyed a renown which 
has rarely fallen to the lot of any living writer. At the 
present day it is common to hear people asserting that 
Byron was not a true poet. Some causes of this rev- 
olution are patent. In the first place, he cannot be 
called a moral poet. His collected works are not of a 
kind to be recommended for family reading ; and the 
poems in which his genius shines most clearly are pre- 
cisely those which lie open to the charges of cynicism, 
unorthodoxy, or licentiousness. Again, he suffers from 
the very range and versatility of his performance. His 
masterpieces are long, and make considerable demands 
upon the reader's patience. Byron has suffered even 



STUDIES AND REMINISCENCES OE BYRON. 



259 



more from the mixed quality of his work. Not only 
are his poems voluminous, but they are exceedingly 
unequal. — J. A. Symonds. 

BYRON COMPARED WITH OTHER NINETEENTH-CENTURY 

POETS. 

The sudden burst of glory which followed upon the 
publication of " Childe Harold," and the indiscriminate 
enthusiasm of his admirers, injured Byron during his 
lifetime by establishing the certainty that whatever he 
wrote would be read. It has injured him still more 
with posterity by stirring a reaction against claims in 
some respects so obviously ill-founded. Instead of sub- 
jecting the whole mass of Byron's poetry to a careful 
criticism, the world has been contented lately to reckon 
it among the nine days' wonders of a previous age. 
This injustice would, however, have been impossible, 
unless a current of taste inimical to Byron had set in 
soon after his death. Students of literature in England 
began about that period to assimilate Wordsworth, Cole- 
ridge, Keats, Shelley, Landor — those very poets whom 
Byron, in his uncritical arrogance, had despised or neg- 
lected. Their ears became accustomed to versification 
more exquisite and careful, to harmonies deeper and 
more refined if less resonant and brilliant. They 
learned to demand a more patient and studied deline- 
ation of natural beauty, passion more reserved, artistic 
aims at once more sober and more earnest, and emotions 
of a less obtrusively personal type. Tennyson and 
Browning, with all the poet-artists of the present gener- 
ation, represent as sheer a departure from Byronian pre- 



26o 



LIT ERA TURE. 



cedent as it is possible to take in literature. The very 
greatness of Byron has unfitted him for an audience 
educated in this different school of poetry. That great- 
ness was his truth to fact, conceived as action, feeling, 
energy ; not as the material for picture-painting, reflec- 




LoRD Byron's Tomb. 

tion, or analysis. Men nursed on the idyllic or the 
analytic kinds of poetry can hardly do him justice ; not 
because he is exactly greater, or they indisputably less, 
but because he makes his best points in a region which 
is alien to their sympathy. — J. A. Symonds. 

BYRON AND PRESENT-DAY STANDARDS OF TASTE. 

We are nowadays accustomed to an art which appeals 
to educated sensibilities, by suggestions and reflections, 
by careful workmanship and attentive study of form, by 



STUDIES AND REMINISCENCES OF BYRON. 2 6 1 

artistically finished epitomes of feeling, by picturesquely 
blended reminiscences of realism, culture, and poetical 
idealism. Byron's work is too primitive, too like the 
raw material of poetry, in its crudity and inequality, to 
suit our Neo- Alexandrian taste. He wounds our sym- 
pathies ; he violates our canons of correctness ; he 
fails to satisfy our subtlest sense of art. He showers 
upon us in profusion what we do not want, and with- 
holds the things for which we have been trained to 
crave. His personality inspires no love, like that which 
makes the devotees of Shelley as faithful to the man as 
they are loyal to the poet. His intellect, though robust 
and masculine, is not of the kind to which we willingly 
submit. As a man, as a thinker, as an artist, he is out 
of harmony with us. Nevertheless, nothing can be 
more certain than Byron's commanding place in English 
literature. He is the only British poet of the nine- 
teenth century who is also European ; nor will the lapse 
of time fail to make his greatness clearer to his fellow- 
countrymen, when a just critical judgment finally domi- 
nates the fluctuations of fashion to which he has been 
subject. — J. A. Symonds. 

BYRON MEASURED BY THE STANDARDS OF UNIVERSAL 
LITERATURE. 

If we measure Byron from the standpoint of British 
literature, where of absolute perfection in verse there is 
perhaps less than we desire, he will scarcely bear the 
test of niceness to which our present rules of taste ex- 
pose him. But if we try him by the standards of uni- 
versal literature, where of finish and exactitude in ex- 



262 LIT ERA TURE. 

ecution there is plenty, we shall find that he has quali- 
ties of strength and elasticity, of elemental sweep and 
energy, which condone all defects in technical achieve- 
ment. Such power, sincerity and radiance, such direct- 
ness of generous enthusiasm and disengagement from 
local or patriotic prepossessions, such sympathy with 
the forces of humanity in movement after freedom, 
such play of humor and passion, as Byron pours into 
the common stock, are no slight contributions. Europe 
does not need to make the discount upon Byron's claims 
to greatness that are made by his own country. — J. A. 
Symonds. 



READINGS FROM BYRON. 



MAID OF ATHENS, ERE WE PART. 



ZwTj ju-oO, <ra? ayanm 



Maid of Athens, ere we part, 
Give, oh, give me back my heart ; 
Or, since that has left my breast. 
Keep it now, and take the rest ! 
Hear my vow before I go, 

ZuJT) jiAOi), (TttS ayanu). 

By those tresses unconfined, 
Woo'd by each ^^gean wind ; 
By those lids whose jetty fringe 
Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge ; 
By those wild eyes like the roe, 

ZwT) ixov, eras ayanS). 

By that lip I long to taste ; 
By that zone-encircled waist ; 
By all the token-flowers that tell 
What words can never speak so well ; 
By love's alternate joy and woe, 

ZwTj fJ-ov, oas ayanu). 

Maid of Athens ! I am gone : 
Think of me, sweet ! when alone. 
Though I fly to Istambol, 
Athens holds my heart and soul : 
Can I cease to love thee? No ! 

Zoirj IJ.OV, eras ayaTru. 

■ My life, I love thee." (Pronounced, Zo-ee mou, sas ag-a-po.) 

263 



2 64 LITER A TURE, 



ON PARTING. 

The kiss, dear maid ! thy lip has left 

Shall never part from mine. 
Till happier hours restore the gift 

Untainted back to thine. 

Thy parting glance, which fondly beams, 

An equal love may see : 
Tlie tear that from thine eyeUd streams 

Can weep no change in me. 

I ask no pledge to make me blest 

In gazing when alone : 
Nor one memorial for a breast 

Whose thoughts are all thine own. 

Nor need I write — to tell the tale 

My pen were doubly weak : 
Oh ! what can idle words avail. 

Unless the heart could speak? 

By day or night, in weal or woe, 

That heart, no longer free. 
Must bear the love it cannot show, 

And silent, ache for thee. 

March, i8ii, 



FARE THEE WELL.^ 

Fare thee well ! and if forever. 
Still forever, fare thee well : 

Even though unforgiving, never 
'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel. 

Would that breast were bared before thee. 
Where thy head so oft hath lain. 

While that placid sleep came o'er, thee 
Which thou ne'er canst know again ; 

1 Addressed to his wife. 



READINGS FROM BYRON. 265 

Would that breast, by thee glanced over, 

Every inmost thought could show ! 
Then thou wouldst at last discover 

'T was not well to spurn it so. 

Though the world for this commend thee — 

Though it smile upon the blow, 
Even its praises must offend thee, 

Founded on another's woe : 

Though my many faults defaced me. 

Could no other arm be found, 
Than the one which once embraced me. 

To inflict a cureless wound? 

Yet, oh yet, thyself deceive not : 

Love may sink by slow decay ; 
But by sudden wrench, believe not 

Hearts can thus be torn away : 

Still thine own its life retaineth, 

Still must mine, though bleeding, beat ; 
And the undying thought which paineth 

Is - that we no more may meet. 

These are words of deeper sorrow 

Than the wail above the dead ; 
Both shall live, but every morrow 

Wake us from a widow'd bed. 

And when thou wouldst solace gather, 

When our child's fiist accents flow, 
Wilt thou teach her to say " Father !" 

Though his care she must forego? 

When her little hands shall press thee, 

When her lip to thine is press'd. 
Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee. 

Think of him thy love had bless'd ! 

Should her lineaments resemble 

Those thou never more may'st see. 
Then thy heart will softly tremble 

With a pulse yet true to me. 



266 LITERATURE. 

AH my faults perchance thou knowest, 
All my madness none can know ; 

All my hopes where'er thou goest, 
Wither, yet with thee they go. 

Every feeling hath been shaken ; 

Pride, which not a world could bow. 
Bows to thee — by thee forsaken, 

Even my soul forsakes me now : 

But 't is done — all words are idle — 
Words from me are vainer still ; 

But the thoughts we cannot bridle 
Force their way without the will. 

Fare thee well ! thus disunited, 

Torn from every nearer tie, 
Seared in heart, and lone, and blighted, 

More than this I scarce can die. 

March 17, 18 16. 

EPISTLE TO AUGUSTA. 1 

My sister ! my sweet sister ! if a name 
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine; 
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim 
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine : 
Go where I will, to me thou art the same — 
A loved regret which I would not resign. 
There yet are two things in my destiny, — 
A world to roam through, and a home with thee. 

The first were nothing — had I still the last, 
It were the haven of my happiness ; 
But other claims and other ties thou hast, 
And mine is not the wish to make them less. 
A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past 
Recalling, as it lies beyond redress ; 
Reversed for him our grandsire's fate of yore, — 
He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore. 

* His sister. 



READINGS FROM BYRON. 267 

If my inheritance of storms hath been 
In other elements, and on the rocks 
Of perils, overlooked or unforeseen, 
I have sustained my share of worldly shocks, 
The fault vi^as mine ; nor do I seek to screen, 
My errors with defensive paradox ; 
I have been cunning in mine overthrow. 
The careful pilot of my proper woe. 

Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward. 
My whole life was a contest, since the day 
That gave me being, gave me that which marrM 
The gift, — a fate, or will, that walk'd astray ; 
And I at times have found the struggle hard. 
And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay : 
But now I fain would for a time survive, 
If but to see what next can well arrive. 

Kingdoms and empires in my little day 
I have outlived, and yet I am not old ; 
And when I look on this, the petty spray 
Of my own years of trouble, which have rolPd 
Like a wild bay of breakers, melts av/ay ; 
Something — I know not what — does still uphold 
A spirit of slight patience ; — not in vain. 
Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain. 

Perhaps the workings of defiance stir 
Within me — or perhaps a cold despair. 
Brought on when ills habitually recur, — 
Perhaps a kinder clime, or purer air, 
(For even to this may change of soul refer. 
And with light armor we may learn to bear). 
Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not 
The chief companion of a calmer lot. 

I feel almost at times as I have felt 

In happy childhood ; trees, and flowers, and brooks, 

Which do remember me of where I dwelt 

Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books, 

Come as of yore upon me, and can melt 



268 LITERATURE. 

My heart with recognition of their looks ; 

And even at moments I could think I see 

Some living thing to love — but none like thee. 

Here are the Alpine landscapes which create 
A fund for conternplation ; — to admire 
Is a brief feeling of a trivial date ; 
But something worthier do such scenes inspire : 
Here to be lonely is not desolate, 
For much I view which I could most desire, 
And, above all, a lake I can behold 
Lovelier, not dearer, than our own of old. 

Oh that thou wert but with me ! — but I grow 
The fool of my own wishes, and forget 
The solitude which I have vaunted so 
Has lost its praise in this but one regret ; 
There may be others which I less may show ; — 
I am not of the plaintive mood, and yet 
I feel an ebb in my philosophy, 
And the tide rising in my altered eye. 

I did remind thee of our own dear Lake, 
By the old Hall which may be mine no more. 
Leman's is fair : but think not I forsake 
The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore : 
Sad havoc Time must with my memory make. 
Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before ; 
Though, like all things which I have loved, they are 
Resign'd forever, or divided far. 

The world is all before me ; I but ask 
Of Nature that with which she will comply — 
It is but in her summer's sun to bask. 
To mingle with the quiet of her sky. 
To see her gentle face without a mask, 
And never gaze on it with apathy. 
She was my early friend, and now shall be 
My sister — till 1 look again on thee. 



READINGS FROM BYRON. 269 

I can reduce all feelings but this one ; 
And that 1 would not ; — for at length I see 
Such scenes as those wherein my life begun. 
The earliest — even the only paths for me — 
Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun, 
I had been better than I now can be ; 
The passions which have torn me would have slept ; 
/had not sufFerM, and thou hadst not wept. 

With false Ambition what had 1 to do? 
Little with Love, and least of all with Fame; 
And yet they came unsought, and with me grew. 
And made me all which they can make — a name. 
Yet this was not the end I did pursue ; 
Surely I once beheld a nobler aim. 
But all is over — I am one the more 
To baffled millions which have gone before. 

And for the future, this world's future may 
From me demand but little of my care ; 
I have outlived myself by many a day ; 
Having survived so many things that were ; 
My years have been no slumber, but the prey 
Of ceaseless vigils ; for I had the share 
Of life which might have fiird a century, 
Before its fourth in time had pass'd me by. 

And for the remnant which may be to come 
I am content ; and for the past I feel 
Not thankless, — for within the crowded sum 
Of struggles, happiness at times would steal, 
And for the present, I would not benumb 
My feelings further. — Nor shall I conceal 
That with all this I still can look around. 
And worship Nature with a thought profound. 

For thee, my own sweet sister, in thy heart 
I know myself secure, as thou in mine ; 
We v/ere and are — I am, even as thou art — 
Beings who ne'er each other can resign ; 



270 LITERATURE, 

It is the same, together or apart, 
From life's commencement to its slow decline 
We are entwined : — let death come slow or fast, 
The tie which bound the first endures the last ! 



WATERLOO.^ 



There was a sound of revelry by night, 
And Belgium's capital had gathered then 
Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright 
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men ; 
A thousand hearts beat happily ; and when 
Music arose with its voluptuous swell, 
Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again, 
And all went merry as a marriage-bell ; 
But hush ! hark ! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell ! 

Did ye not hear it ? — No ; 't was but the wind. 
Or the car rattling o'er the stony street ; 
On with the dance ! let joy be unconfined ; 
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet 
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet. — 
But hark! that heavy sound breaks in once more, 
As if the clouds its echo would repeat ; 
And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before ! 
Arm ! arm ! it is — it is — the cannon's opening roar ! 

Within a window'd niche of that high hall 
Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain ; he did hear 
That sound the first amidst the festival. 
And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear ; 
And when they smiled because he deem'd it near. 
His heart more truly knew that peal too well 
Which stretch'd his father on a bloody bier, 
And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell : 
He rush'dinto the field, and, foremost fighting, fell. 

iFrom " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," Canto III. 



271 



READINGS FROM BYRON. 

Ah ! then and there was hurrying to and fro, 
And gathering tears, and trembUngs of distress, 
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago 
Blush'd at the praise of their own loveliness ; 
And there were sudden partings, such as press 
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs 
Which ne'er might be repeated : who could guess 
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, 
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise ! 

And there was mounting in hot haste : the steed, 
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car, 
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed. 
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war ; 
And the deep thunder peal on peal afar ; 
And near, the beat of the alarming drum 
Roused up the soldier ere the morning star ; 
While throng'd the citizens with terror dumb, 
Or whispering, with white lips — "The foe! they come! they 
come ! " 

And wild and high the " Cameron's gathering" rose ! 
The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills 
Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes : — 
How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills, 
Savage and shrill ! But with the breath which fills 
Their mountain pipe, so fill the mountaineers 
With the fierce native daring which instils 
The stirring memory of a thousand years, 
And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each clansman's ears ! 

And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves, 
Dewy with nature's tear-drops, as they pass, 
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves. 
Over the unreturning brave, — alas ! 
Ere evening to be trodden like the grass 
Which now beneath them, but above shall grow 
In its next verdure, when this fiery mass 
Of living valor, rolling on the foe. 
And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low. 



272 



LITER A TURE. 



Last noon beheld them full of lusty life, 
Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay, 
The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife, 
The morn the marshalling in arms, — the day 
Battle's magnificently-stern array ! 
The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which when rent 
The earth is cover'd thick with other clay. 
Which her own clay shall cover, heap'd and pent, 
Rider and horse, — friend, foe, — in one red burial blent ! 



VENICE.^ 

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs ; 
A palace and a prison on each hand : 
I saw from out the wave her structures rise 
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand : 
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand 
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles 
O'er the far times, when many a subject land 
Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles. 
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles ! 

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean 
Rising with her tiara of proud towers 
At airy distance, with majestic motion, 
A ruler of the waters and their powers : 
And such she was ; her daughters had their dowers 
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East 
Pour'd in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. 
In purple was she robed, and of her feast 
Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity increased. 

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more. 
And silent rows the songless gondolier ; 
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, 
And music meets not always now the ear : 
Those days are gone — but Beauty still is here. 
States fall, arts fade — but Nature doth not die, 

1 From " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," Canto IV. 



READINGS FROM BYRON. 273 

Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, 
The pleasant place of all festivity, 
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy ! 

But unto us she hath a spell beyond 
Her name in story, and her long array 
Of mighty shadows, w^hose dim forms despond 
Above the dogeless city's vanishM sway ; 
Ours is a trophy which will not decay 
With the Rialto ; Shylock and the Moor, 
And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away — 
The keystones of the arch ! though all were o'er, 
For us repeopled were the solitary shore. 



The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord ; 
And, annual marriage now no more renew'd, 
The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored, 
Neglected garment of her widowhood ! 
St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood 
Stand, but in mockery of his withered power, 
Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued, 
And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour 
When Venice was a queen with an unequall'd dower. 
******** 

I loved her from my boyhood ; she to me 
Was as a fairy city of the heart. 
Rising like water-columns from the sea. 
Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart ; 
And Otway, Radcliflfe, Schiller, Shakspeare's art, 
Had stamped her image in me, and even so, 
Although I found her thus, we did not part, 
Perchance even dearer in her day of woe. 
Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show. 



2 74 LITERATURE. 



ROME.l 



Oh, Rome ! my country ! city of the soul ! 
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, 
Lone mother of dead empires ! and control 
In their shut breasts their petty misery. 
What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see 
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way 
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples. Ye ! 
Whose agonies are evils of a day — 
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. 

The Niobe of nations ! there she stands, 
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe ; 
An empty urn within her withered hands, 
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago ; 
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now ; 
The very sepulchres lie tenantless 
Of their heroic dwellers : dost thou flow, 
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness? 
Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress. 

The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire, 
Have dealt upon the seven-hill'd city's pride ; 
She saw her glories star by star expire. 
And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride, 
Where the car climb'd the Capitol ; far and wide 
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site : 
Chaos of ruins ! who shall trace the void. 
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light. 
And say, " here was, or is, " where all is doubly night ? 

The double night of ages, and of her, 

Night's daughter. Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap 

All round us ; we but feel our way to err : 

The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map, 

And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap ; 

1 From " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," Canto IV. 



READINGS FROM BYRON. 275 

But Rome is as the desert, where we steer 
Stumbling o'er recollections ; now we clap 
Our hands, and cry " Eureka ! " it is clear — 
When but some false mirage of ruin rises near. 

Alas ! the lofty city ! and alas ! 
The trebly hundred triumphs ! and the day 
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass 
The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away ! 
Alas, for Tully's voice, and Vhgirs lay, 
And Livy's pictured page ! — but these shall be 
Her resurrection ; all beside — decay. 
Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see 
That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free ! 



THE DYING GLADIATOR.^ ■ 

I see before me the Gladiator lie : 
He leans upon his hand, — his manly brow 
Consents to death, but conquers agony, 
And his drooped head sinks gradually low, — 
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow 
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, 
Like the first of a thunder-shower ; and now 
The arena swims around him : he is gone, 
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won. 

He heard it, but he heeded not : his eyes 
Were with his heart, and that was far away ; 
He recked not of the life he lost nor prize, 
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, — 
There were his young barbarians all at play, 
There was their Dacian mother, — he, their sire, 
Butchered to make a Roman holiday ; — 
All this rushed with his blood. — Shall he expire. 
And unavenged? — Arise ! ye Goths, and glut your ire ! 

1 From " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, " Canto IV. 



276 LITERATURE. 



THE COLISEUM THE PANTHEON.^ 

But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam ; 
And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways, 
And roar'd or murmur'd like a mountain stream 
Dashing or winding as its torrent strays ; 
Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise 
Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd, 
My voice sounds much — and fall the stars' faint ra3's 
On the arena void — seats crushYl — walls bovv'd — 
And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud. 

A ruin — yet what ruin ! from its mass 
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been rear'd ; 
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass, 
And marvel where the spoil could have appeared. 
Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared? 
Alas ! developed, opens the decay. 
When the colossal fabric's form is near'd : 
It will not bear the brightness of the day. 
Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft away. 

But when the rising moon begins to climb 
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there ; 
When the stars twinkle through the loops of time. 
And the low night-breeze waves along the air 
The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear, 
Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head ; 
When the light shines serene but doth not glare, 
Then in this magic circle raise the dead: 
Heroes have trod this spot — 'tis on their dust ye tread. 

" While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand ; 

When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall ; 

And when Rome falls — the World." From our own land 

Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall 

In Saxon times, which we are wont to call 

Ancient ; and these three mortal things are still 

iFrom " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," Canto IV. 



READINGS FROM BYRON. 



277 



On their foundations, and unaltered all ; 
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill, 
The World, the same wide den — of thieves, or what ye will. 

Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime — 
Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods, 
From Jove to Jesus — spared and blest by time ; 
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods 
Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods 
His way through thorns to ashes — glorious dome ! 
Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and tyrants' rods 
Shiver upon thee — sanctuary and home 
Of art and piety — Pantheon ! — pride of Rome ! 

ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN.^ 

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods. 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 
There is society, where none intrudes, 
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar : 
I love not Man the less, but Nature more, 
From these our interviews, in which I steal 
From all I may be, or have been before, 
To mingle with the Universe, and feel 
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. 

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean — roll ! 
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; 
Man marks the earth with ruin — his control 
Stops with the shore ; upon the watery plain 
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain 
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, 
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain. 
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, 
Without a grave, unknelPd, uncoffin'd, and unknown. 

His steps are not upon thy paths, —thy fields 
Are not a spoil for him, —thou dost arise 
And shake him from thee ; the vile strength he wields 
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, 

1 From " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," Canto IV. 



278 LITER A TURE, 

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, 
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray. 
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies 
His petty hope in some near port or bay, 
And dashest him again to earth : — there let him lay. 

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls 
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, 
And monarchs tremble in their capitals, — 
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make 
Their clay creator the vain title take 
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war, — 
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, 
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar 
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar. 

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee — 
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? 
Thy waters wash'd them power while they were free, 
And many a tyrant since ; their shores obey 
The stranger, slave, or savage ; their decay 
Has dried up realms to deserts : — not so thou ; — 
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play — 
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow — 
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. 

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form 
Glasses itself in tempests ; in all time, 
Calm or convulsed — in breeze, or gale, or storm — 
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime 
Dark-heaving; — boundless, endless, and sublime — 
The image of Eternity — the throne 
Of the Invisible ; — even from out thy slime 
The monsters of the deep are made ; each zone 
Obeys thee ; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. 

And I have loved thee. Ocean ! and my joy 
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be 
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward : from a boy 
I wanton'd with thy breakers — they to me 
Were a delight ; and if the freshening sea 



READINGS FROM BYRON. 279 

Made them a terror — 't was a pleasing fear, 
For I was as it were a child of thee, 
And trusted to thy billows far and near, 
And laid my hand upon thy mane — as I do here. 



FIRST LOVE.^ 

'T is sweet to hear. 
At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep, 

The song and oar of Adda's gondolier. 

By distance mellow'd, o'er the waters sweep ; 

'T is sweet to see the evening star appear ; 
'T is sweet to listen as the night-winds creep 

From leaf to leaf; 't is sweet to view on high 

The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky. 

'T is sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark 

Bay deep-mouth'd welcome as we draw near home ; 

'T is sweet to know there is an eye will mark 
Our coming, and look brighter when we come ; 

'T is sweet to be awaken'd by the lark. 
Or luU'd by falling waters ; sweet the hum 

Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds. 

The lisp of children, and their earliest words. 

Sweet is the vintage, when the showering grapes 

In Bacchanal profusion reel to earth. 
Purple and gushing : sweet are our escapes 

From civic revelry to rural mirth ; 
Sweet to the miser are his glittering heaps ; 

Sweet to the father is his first-born's birth ; 
Sweet is revenge — especially to women, 
Pillage to soldiers, prize-money to seamen. 

Sweet is a legacy, and passing sweet 
The unexpected death of some old lady. 

Or gentleman of seventy years complete, 

Who 've made " us youth " wait too — too long already, 

1 From " Don Juan," Canto I. 



28o LITERATURE. 

For an estate, or cash, or country seat, 

Still breaking, but with stamina so steady. 
That all the Israelites are fit to mob its 
Next owner for their double-damn'd post-obits. 

'Tis sweet to win, no matter hoAv, one's laurels. 
By blood or ink ; 't is sweet to put an end 

To strife ; 't is sometimes sweet to have our quarrels. 
Particularly with a tiresome friend : 

Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels ; 
Dear is the helpless creature we defend 

Against the world ; and dear the schoolboy spot 

We ne'er forget, though there we are forgot. 

But sweeter still than this, than these, than all. 
Is first and passionate love — it stands alone. 

Like Adam's recollection of his fall ; 
The tree of knowledge has been pluck'd — all 's known 

And life yields nothing further to recall 
Worthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown. 

No doubt in fable, as the unforgiven 

Fire which Prometheus filch'd for us from heaven. 



DONNA Julia's letter. ^ 

** They tell me 't is decided ; you depart : 

'T is wise — 't is well, but not the less a pain ; 

I have no further claim on your young heart. 
Mine is the victim, and would be again : 

To love too much has been the only art 
I used ; — I write in haste, and if a stain 

Be on this sheet, 't is not what it appears ; 

My eyeballs burn and throb, but have no tears. 

" I loved, I love you; for this love have lost 

State, station, heaven, mankind's, my own esteem ; 
And yet cannot regret what it hath cost. 
So dear is still the memory of that dream ; 

1 From " Don Juan," Canto L 



READINGS FROM BYRON. 28 1 

Yet, if I name my guilt, H is not to boast, — 

None can deem iiarshlier of me than I deem : 
I trace this scrawl because I cannot rest ; — 
I Ve nothing to reproach, or to request. 

' Man's love is of man's life a thing apart, 

'T is woman's whole existence. Man may range 

The court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart; 
Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange 

Pride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart. 

And few there are whom these cannot estrange : 

Men have all these resources, we but one, — 

To love again, and be again undone. 

' You will proceed in pleasure, and in pride, 

Beloved and loving many ; all is o'er 
For me on earth, except some years to hide 

My shame and sorrow deep in my heart's core ; 
These I could bear, but cannot cast aside 

The passion which still rages as before, — 
And so farewell — forgive me, love me — No ; 
That word is idle now — but let it go. 

' My breast has been all weakness, is so yet ; 

But still I think I can collect my mind ; 
My blood still rushes where my spirit 's set, 

As roll the waves before the settled wind ; 
My heart is feminine, nor can forget — 

To all, except one image, madly blind ; 
So shakes the needle, and so stands the pole. 
As vibrates my fond heart to my fix'd soul. 

'• 1 have no more to say, but linger still, 

And dare not set my seal upon this sheet ; 

And yet I may as well the task fulfil. 

My misery can scarce be more complete : 

I had not lived till now, could sorrow kill ; 

Death shuns the wretch who fain the blow would meet, 

And I must even survive this last adieu, 

And bear with life, to love and pray for you ! " 



282 LITER A TURE. 



HAIDEE DISCOVERING JUAN.^ 

There, breathless, with his digging nails he clung 
Fast to the sand, lest the returning wave, 

From whose reluctant roar his life he wrung. 
Should suck him back to her insatiate grave : 

And there he lay, full length, where he was flung, 
Before the entrance of a cliff-worn cave, 

With just enough of life to feel its pain. 

And deem that it was saved, perhaps, in vain. 

With slow and staggering effort he arose, 
But sunk again upon his bleeding knee 

And quivering hand ; and then he look'd for those 
Who long had been his mates upon the sea ; 

But none of them appeared to share his woes, 
Save one, a corpse, from out the famished three. 

Who died two days before, and now had found 

An unknown barren beach for burial ground. 

And as he gazed, his dizzy brain spun fast. 
And down he sunk ; and as he sunk, the sand 

Swam round and round, and all his senses pass'd : 
He fell upon his side, and his stretched hand 

Drooped dripping on the oar (their jury-mast) ; 
And, like a wither'd lily, on the land 

His slender frame and pallid aspect lay. 

As fair a thing as e'er was form'd of clay. 

How long in his damp trance young Juan lay 
He knew not, for the earth was gone for him. 

And Time had nothing more of night nor day 
For his congealing blood, and senses dim ; 

And how this heavy faintness passM away 
He knew not, till each painful pulse and limb. 

And tingling vein, seem'd throbbing back to life. 

For Death, though vanquished, still retired with strife. 

His eyes he open'd, shut, again unclosed, 
For all was doubt and dizziness ; he thought 

1 From " Don Juan," Canto II. 



READINGS FROM BYRON. 283 

He still was in the boat, and had but dozed, 

And felt again with his despair overwrought, 
And wished it death in which he had reposed ; 

And then once more his feelings back were brought, 
And slowly by his swimming eyes was seen 
A lovely female face of seventeen. 
'T was bending close o'er his, and the small mouth 

Seem'd almost prying into his for breath ; 
And chafing him, the soft warm hand of youth 

Recaird his answering spirits back from death ; 
And, bathing his chill temples, tried to soothe 

Each pulse to animation, till beneath 
Its gentle touch and trembling care, a sigh 
To these kind efforts made a low reply. 
Then was the cordial pour'd, and mantle flung 

Around his scarce-clad limbs ; and the fair arm 
Raised higher the faint head which o'er it hung ; 
And her transparent cheek, all pure and warm, 
Pillow'd his death-like forehead ; then she wrung 
His dewy curls, long drench'd by every storm ; 
And watch'd with eagerness each throb that drew 
A sigh from his heaved bosom — and hers, too. 

And lifting him with care into the cave. 

The gentle girl, and her attendant, — one 
Young, yet her elder, and of brow less grave. 

And more robust of figure, — then begun 
To kindle fire ; and as the new flames gave 

Light to the rocks that root'd them, which the sun 
Had never seen, the maid, or whatsoe'er 
She was, appear'd distinct, and tall, and fair. 
Her brow was overhung with coins of gold, 

That sparkled o'er the auburn of her hair, 
Her clustering hair, whose longer locks were roll'd 

In braids behind ; and though her stature were 
Even of the highest for a female mould. 

They nearly reach'd her heel ; and in her air 
There was a something which bespoke command, 
As one who was a lady in the land. 



284 LITERATURE, 

Her hair, I said, was auburn ; but her eyes 
Were black as death, their lashes the same hue. 

Of downcast length, in whose silk shadow lies 
Deepest attraction ; for when to the view 

Forth from its raven fringe the full glance flies. 
Ne'er with such force the swiftest arrow flew : 

'T is as the snake late coiPd, who pours his length. 

And hurls at once his venom and his strength. 

Her brow was white and low, her cheek's pure dye 
Like twilight rosy still with the set sun ; 

Short upper lip — sweet lips ! that make us sigh 
Ever to have seen such ; for she was one 

Fit for the model of a statuary 

(A race of mere impostors, when all 's done — 

I Ve seen much finer women, ripe and real. 

Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal). 

THE ISLES OF GREECE.^ 

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece ! 

Where burning Sappho loved and sung, 
Where grew the arts of war and peace. 

Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung ! 
Eternal summer gilds them yet, 
But all, except the r sun, is set. 

The Scian and the Teian muse. 
The hero's harp, the lover's lute. 

Have found the fame your shores refuse : 
Their place of birth alone is mute 

To sounds which echo further west 

Than your sires' " Islands of the Blest." 

The mountains look on Marathon — 
And Marathon looks on the sea ; 

And musing there an hour alone, 

I dream'd that Greece might still be free; 

For standing on the Persians' grave, 

I could not deem myself a slave. 

' From " Don Juan," Canto III. 



READINGS FROM BYRON. 28- 

A king sate on the rocky brow 

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis ; 
And ships, by thousands, lay below, 

And men in nations ; — all were his ! 
He counted them at break of day — 
And when the sun set, where were they? 

And where are they? and where art thou. 

My country ? On thy voiceless shore 
The heroic lay is tuneless now — 

The heroic bosom beats no more ! 
And must thy lyre, so long divine, 
Degenerate into hands like mine ? 

T is something, in the dearth of fame, 

Though link'd among a fetter'd race, 
To feel at least a patriot's shame. 

Even as I sing, suffuse my face ; 
For what is left the poet here? 
For Greeks a blush — for Greece a tear. 

Must we but weep o'er days more blest? 

Must we but blush ? — Our fathers bled. 
Earth ! render back from out thy breast 

A remnant of our Spartan dead ! 
Of the three hundred grant but three. 
To make a new Thermopylae ! 



What, silent still? and silent all? 

Ah ! no ; — the voices of the dead 
Sound like a distant torrent's fall, 

And answer, " Let one living head, 
But one arise, — we come, we come ! " 
'T is but the living who are dumb. 

In vain — in vain ! strike other chords 
Fill high the cup with Samian wine ! 

Leave battles to the Turkish hordes. 
And shed the blood of Scio's vine! 

Hark ! rising to the ignoble call, 

How answers each bold Bacchanal ! 



286 LITERATURE. 

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet ; 

Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone ? 
Of two such lessons, why forget 

The nobler and the manlier one? 
You have the letters Cadmus gave, — 
Think ye he meant them for a slave ? 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! 

We will not think of themes like these ! 
It made Anacreon's song divine ; 

He served, — but served Polycrates, — 
A tyrant ; but our masters then 
Were still at least our countrymen. 

The tyrant of the Chersonese 

Was freedom's best and bravest friend ; 

That tyrant was Miltiades ! 

O that the present hour would lend 

Another despot of the kind ! 

Such chains as his were sure to bind. 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! 

On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore. 
Exists the remnant of a line 

Such as the Doric mothers bore ; 
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown. 
The Heracleidan blood might own. 

Trust not for freedom to the Franks, — 
They have a king who buys and sells ; 

In native swords, and native ranks. 
The only hope of courage dwells ; 

But Turkish force, and Latin fraud, 

Would break your shield, however broad. 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! 

Our virgins dance beneath the shade, — 
I see their glorious black eyes shine ; 

But gazing on each glowing maid, 
My own the burning tear-drop laves. 
To think such breasts must suckle slaves. 



READINGS FROM BYRON, 

Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, 
Where nothing, save the waves and I, 

May hear our mutual murmurs sweep ; 
There, swan-like, let me sing and die: 

A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine, — 

Dash down yon cup of Samian wine ! 



287 



STUDENTS' NOTES AND QUERIES. 



QUERIES. 

1. What famous heroine of Byron's is referred to in the following 
description ? — 

*'Then comes the episode of 'a long low island song of 

ancient days,' the character of the girl herself being like a thread 
of pure gold running through the fabric of its surroundings, motley 
in every page." 

2. What famous poem of Byron's is the subject of the following 
comments? — 

** It can be credited with a text only in the sense in which every 
large experience, of its own accord, conveys its lesson. It was to 
the author a picture of the world as he saw it ; and it is to us a 
mirror in which every attribute of his genius, every peculiarity of 
his nature, is reflected without distortion," 

3. Who are supposed to have been the originals of the following 
characters in "Don Juan": {a) "Miss Millpond " ; {b) "Lady 
Adeline"; (^ " Aurora Raby " ; (^) " Zuleika " ? 

4. Two ladies, friends of Lord Byron, were opposed to his writ- 
ing "Don Juan." Once when he said that "Don Juan" would 
live longer than " Childe Harold," one of them replied : " Oh, but 
I would rather have the fame of ' Childe Harold ' for three years 
than an immortality of ' Don Juan.'" They used to speak of 
"Don Juan" as "that horrid, wearisome Don," and endeavor to 
persuade him to stop writing it. Who were these two ladies? 

5. Who was it that once asked Byron "when he meant to give 
up his bad habit of making verses "? 

6. What great world renowned critic and poet spoke these words 
of Byron shortly after his death ? — 

** The English may think of Byron as they please ; but this is 
288 



BYRON— NOTES AND QUERIES. 289 

certain, they can show no poet who is to be compared with him. 
He is different from all the others, and, for the most part, greater." 



7. In what poems are the following verses or stanzas to be found? 

{a) " It might be months, or years, or days, 

I kept no count, — I took no note, 
I had no hope my eyes to raise, 

And clear them of their dreary mote ; 
At last men came to set me free ; 

I asked not why, and recked not where ; 
It was at length the same to me, 
Fetter'd or fetterless to be, 

I learn'd to love despair." 

(<^) " At length, while reeling on our way, 
Methought I heard a courser neigh, 
From out yon tuft of blackening firs. 
Is it the wind those branches stirs? 
No, no ! from out the forest prance 

A trampling troop ; I see them come ! 
In one vast squadron they advance ! 

I strove to cry, — my lips were dumb. 
The steeds rush on in plunging pride ; 
But where are they the reins to guide? 
A thousand horse, — and none to ride ! 
With flowing tail, and flying mane, 
Wide nostrils, never stretched by pain, 
Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein. 
And feet that iron never shod. 
And flanks unscarr'd by spur or rod, 
A thousand horse, the wild, the free. 
Like waves that follow o'er the sea, 

Came thickly thundering on." 

{c) " The triumph and the vanity. 
The rapture of the strife ; 
The earthquake voice of Victory, 
To thee the breath of life ; 



2 90 LIT ERA TURE. 

The sword, the sceptre, and that sway 
Which man seemed made but to obey, 

Wherewith renown was rife, — 
All quelled ! Dark Spirit ! what must be 
The madness of thy memory ! " 

id) " Here 's a sigh to those that love me, 
And a smile to those who hate ; 
And, whatever sky 's above me, 
Here 's a heart for every fate." 

(<?) " Were 't the last drop in the well, 
As I gasp'd upon the brink. 
Ere my fainting spirit fell, 

'T is to thee that I would drink." 

(/) " I have toird, and tilPd, and sweaten in the sun, 
According to the curse : — must I do more ? 
For what should I be gentle? for a war 
With all the elements ere they will yield 
The bread we eat?" For what must I be grateful? 
For being dust, and grovelling in the dust, 
Till I return to dust? If I am nothing — 
For nothing shall I be an hypocrite, 
And seem well-pleas'd with pain ? For what should I 
Be contrite ? " 

{g) "Woman, that fair and fond deceiver, 

How prompt are striplings to believe her ! " 

{Ji) " Away with your fictions of flimsy romance ; 

Those tissues of falsehood which folly has wove ! 
Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance, 
And the rapture which dwells in the first kiss of love." 

(/) " At once I '11 tell thee our opinion 

Concerning woman's soft dominion : 
Howe'er we gaze with admiration, 
On eyes of blue, or lips carnation, 
Howe'er the flowing locks attract us, 
Howe'er those beauties may distract us. 
Still fickle, we are prone to rove, — 



BYRON— NOTES AND QUERIES. 29 1 

These cannot fix our souls to love. 
It is not too severe a stricture, 
To say they form a pretty picture ; 
But wouldst thou see the secret chain 
Which binds us in your humble train, 
To hail you queens of all creation — 
Know, in a word, 'tis : Animation." 

(/) " A man must serve his time tD evYy trade 

Save censure — critics all are ready made." 

(^) ' ' And shall we own such judgment ? No — as soon 
Seek roses in December — ice in June ; 
Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff, 
Believe a woman, or an epitaph. 
Or any other thing that's false, before 
You trust in critics." 

(/) " It was the cooling hour, just when the rounded 
Red sun sinks down behind the azure hill, 

Which then seems as if the whole earth it bounded, 
Circling all nature, hush'd and dim and still. 

With the far mountain-crescent half-surrounded 
On one side, and the deep sea calm and chill 

Upon the other, and the rosy sky, 

With one star sparkling through it like an eye. 

" And thus they wander'd forth, and hand in hand, 
Over the shining pebbles and the shells. 

Gliding along the smooth and hardened sand ; 
And, in the worn and wild receptacles 

Work'd by the storms, yet worked as it were plann'd. 
In hollow halls, with sparry roofs and cells. 

They turned to rest : and, each clasp'd by an arm. 

Yielded to the deep twilight's purple charm." 

(w) '"T is time this heart should be unmoved, 
Since others it has ceased to move : 
Yet, though I cannot be beloved. 
Still let me love. 



292 LITERATURE. 

" My days are in the yellow leaf; 

The flowers and fruits of love are gone ; 
The worm, the canker, and the grief, 
Are mine alone." 

(«) " If thou regrett'st thy youth — ivJiy live? — 
The land of honorable death 
Is here : — up to the field, and give 
Away thy breath ! 

" Seek out — less often sought than found — 
A soldier's grave, for thee the best ; 
Then look around, and choose thy ground. 
And take thy rest." 

ANSWERS. 

I. Haid^e. 2. "Don Juiin.'" 3. {a) Lady Byron; {b) Lady 
Blessington ; {c) The Countess Guiccioli (there are those, however, 
who think that "Aurora Raby " personates Lady Byron as Byron 
first knew her); {d^ "Thyrza," but who Thyrza was is quite un- 
known. 4. The Countess Guiccioli and his sister Mrs. Leigh. 
5. His wife. 6. Goethe. 7. {a) " The Prisoner of Chillon " ; {b) 
" Mazeppa's Ride " ; {c) "Ode to Napoleon " ; {d) "To Thomas 
Moore''; {e) the same; (/) "Cain"; {g) "To Woman," in 
" Hours of Idleness " ; (//) " The first Kiss of Love," in the same ; 
(/) " To Marion," in the same; (7) "English Bards and Scotch 
Reviewers"; {k) the same; (/) Haid^e wandering with Juan, in 
*' Don Juan"; {m) Lines composed by Lord Byron in Greece — 
being the last he ever composed — " Missolonghi, January 22, 
1824. On this day I complete my thirty-sixth year"; {71) the con- 
cluding stanzas of the same. 



STUDY OUTLINE FOR CLUBS AND CIRCLES, 



1. Read the " Biographical Study" as h3rein contained. 

2. If further biographical details are needed they will be found 
in two excellent books: (i) "The Life of Lord Byron" by the 
Hon. Roden Noel, in the " Great Writers " series ; and (2) NichoPs 
"Byron" in the "English Men of Letters" series. A very good 
and sympathetic account of Byron is given by the late Professor 
Minto in the article on " Byron" in the " Encyclopedia Britannica," 
which everyone should read who can possibly get access to it. The 
article on " Byron" by Leslie Stephen in the " Dictionary of Na- 
tional Biography " will be found to contain almost all the known 
important facts concerning Byron's life and work. Of course the 
standard biography of Byron is his " Life and Letters " by Thomas 
Moore, a work for which Moore was paid by the publisher, John 
Murray, 4 000 guineas ($20,000). The American edition is pub- 
lished by Harper & Brothers. 

3. Reference is made in the "Biographical Study " to an article 
bearing on the question of the cause of the separation of Lady 
Byron from Lord Byron, written by the late Mrs. Harriet Beecher 
Stowe. This article, entitled, "The True Story of Lady Byron's 
Life," was published in the Atlantic Monthly, September, 1869. It 
is very painful reading to all lovers of Byron's name and fame, but 
it is a too important contribution to the controversy that has arisen 
over the causes of the separation to be forgotten, or wholly ignored. 

4. For a study of Byron's poetry, the first thing the student 
should do is to read the selections given in the present volume. 
These, on the whole, give a very fair idea of Byron's poetical power 
and range, apart from his power and range as a satiric writer. For 
club work it is difficult beyond such selections as are here given to 
make recommendations. Much of Byron's best work is too long 
for club study; and much of it is otherwise unsuited, at least for 
study in mixed classes. Perhaps the one best work of Byron's for 

293 



294 



LIT ERA TURE. 



class study is the Fourth Canto of '* Childe Harold." An excellent 
edition of "Childe Harold "for class use is the one annotated by 
Dr. W. J.Rolfe, and published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. ; another 
is that edited by H. F. Tozer, and published by the Clarendon Press. 

5. Other poems that are very representative of Byron are : " The 
Prisoner of Chillon," "The Bride of Abydos," " Mazeppa," and 
" The Giaour." If one should like to read some of " Don Juan" 
the first four cantos of that long poem are perhaps as good as any. 
They certainly contain some of the very finest verses Byron ever 
wrote. But they are to be read privately, and only by those whose 
minds and judgments are mature. Critics universally agree in de- 
scribing Byron's characterization of Haid6e as one of the most 
beautiful things in literature. From the seventh to the tenth canto 
the poem is not so good as it is in other parts, nor are the fifth and 
sixth cantos equal to the general level of the opening four cantos 
and the closing cantos. 

6. No real lover of Byron will be satisfied with anything less 
than a complete edition of Byron's poems. But even those who 
like complete editions like also a well-made selection. Of the " se- 
lections," perhaps the best is that edited by Matthew Arnold and 
published in the " Golden Treasury" series by the Macmillan Com- 
pany. This edition is also specially valuable because of its intro- 
ductory essay. 

7. For critical estimates of Byron the student is presented in 
the present volume with a fair selection of some of the best. If 
further critical appreciation is needed the biographical works above 
quoted all contain excellent cridcal chapters. In the fourth volume 
of Ward's "English Poets" is an excellent critical estimate of 
Byron by John Addington Symonds, in which Byron's position 
among the world's great poets is carefully considered. Critical 
estimates of great value will also be found in John Morley's " Critical 
Essays," in Swinburne's "Essays and Studies" (Scribners), and 
in Dowden's " Studies in Literature" (Scribners). 

8. Hattie Tyng Griswold's sketch of Byron in " Home Life of 
Great Authors" (A. C. McClurg & Co.) and the descriptions of 
Byron's homes, etc., in Dr. T. F. Wolfe's " A Literary Pilgrimage" 
(J. B. Lippincott Co.) will be found admirable for reading aloud 
in clubs and circles. 

9. Every one should try to glance over if not to read the Coun- 
tess Guiccioli's "Recollections of Lord Byron" (Harpers). It is 



BYRON STUDY FOR CLUBS AND CIRCLES. 



295 



scarcely too much to say that it was the Countess Guiccioli that 
saved Byron from himself, and the world of literature owes her a 
great debt, unfortunate as her career in some respects was. 

10. Lastly, Macaulay's essay on ** Byron" is one of the cleverest 
things Macaulay ever wrote, and, though the judgments of the essay 
are not always sound, they are nearly enough so to be generally 
acceptable. Every member of a Home Study Circle should read 
this admirable essay. 



